THE    HEBREW    LITERATURE 

OF   WISDOM 
IN  THE   LIGHT   OF   TO-DAY 


" c  These  people  have  a  secret,'  we  all  said ;  l  they  have 
discerned  the  way  the  world  was  going,  and  therefore 
they  have  prevailed.' " 

MATTHEW    ARNOLD. 


"  And  Freedom  rear'd  in  that  august  sunrise 
Her  beautiful  bold  brow.  .  .  . 

41  There  was  no  blood  upon  her  maiden  robes 

Sunn'd  by  those  orient  skies ; 
But  round  about  the  circles  of  the  globes 
Of  her  keen  eyes 

41  And  in  her  raiment's  hem  was  traced  in  flame 

WISDOM,  a  name  to  shake 
All  evil  dreams  of  power  —  a  sacred  name." 

TENNYSON. 


THE 

HEBREW  LITERATURE 
OF  WISDOM 

IN  THE  LIGHT  OF  TO-DAY 


BY 

JOHN  FRANKLIN  GENUNG 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
XUberstfcc  J3ress  Cambribge 


COPYRIGHT  1906  BY  JOHN  FRANKLIN  GENUNG 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November  7906 


TO 

GEORGE  HARRIS,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
whose  kind  encouragement  speeded 
the  preparation  of  my  first  volume 
in  the  study  of  Hebrew  Wisdom ; 
whose  quick  response  of  generous 
praise  was  the  earliest  greeting  elic- 
ited by  my  second ;  I  now,  with 
the  added  love  and  honor 
born  of  closer  associ- 
ation, inscribe 
this,  my 
third 


2227538 


PREFACE 

DO  you  suppose  Shakespeare  meant  all 
that  ?"  was  once  asked  of  a  teacher 
under  whose  interpretative  reading  the 
pages  of  the  Dramatist  seemed  to  glow  with  new 
power  and  suggestion.  Pausing  for  an  instant's 
reflection,  he  replied,  "My  concern  is  with  what 
Shakespeare  means,  not  with  what  he  meant." 
Such,  in  a  single  discriminating  word,  is  the  con- 
cern of  the  volume  here  submitted  to  the  reader. 
Its  aim  is  to  unfold,  in  the  literary  idiom  of  to-day, 
what  that  strain  of  scripture  utterance  known  to 
scholars  as  Wisdom  means,  for  now  and  all  time, 
as  distinguished  from,  or  rather  as  added  to,  what 
supposably  it  once  meant. 

In  the  sentiment  that  just  now  prevails  in 
criticism,  such  inquiry  after  present  values  would 
seem  almost  to  be  under  the  necessity  of  apolo- 
gizing for  itself,  lest  it  should  run  the  risk  of 
reading  into  the  scripture  text  things  not  cate- 
gorically there,  or  not  consciously  in  the  mind  of 
the  original  writers.  The  passion  for  the  historical, 
the  archaeological,  the  bald  factual,  has  so  taken 

vii 


PREFACE 

possession  of  the  critical  methods  of  to-day,  well- 
nigh  to  the  point  of  obsession,  that  hardly  any- 
thing is  accounted  noteworthy  except  the  fact 
that  three  hundred  years  before  Christ  a  writer 
had  a  thought  just  so  big  and  no  bigger,  or  that 
the  life  and  words  of  Christ  Himself,  carefully 
delimited  from  what  later  tradition  and  insight 
have  added,  should  be  cramped  to  what  was  seen 
and  heard  in  the  year  30  A.  D.  Just  as  science  is 
walking  with  its  head  inveterately  over  its  shoul- 
der, searching  for  germs  and  atoms  and  electrons, 
so  criticism  is  harking  back  almost  exclusively  to 
the  primordial  in  fact  and  idea,  as  if  this  only 
were  authentic,  and  as  if  all  evolution  after  cer- 
tain determinate  points  and  periods  were  to  be 
rejected  as  so  much  dubious  surplusage.  The 
evolutionary  course  of  the  brooding,  restless  spirit 
of  man,  as  he  feels  his  way  through  the  experience 
and  concepts  of  the  ages,  shaping  and  refining  his 
heritage  of  ideas  from  crudity  to  contour  and  sym- 
metry, is  sadly  neglected,  like  wayward  dreams, 
from  the  sum  total  of  the  count.  But  ideas  are  the 
life  of  the  race;  and  ideas  cannot  stand  still;  they 
are  growing  and  maturing  all  the  while.  It  was 
so  in  Job's  and  Koheleth's  time;  it  did  not  cease 
to  be  so  when  Christ  died.  To  say  that  the  sages' 
thought  is  germinal  is  to  assume  that  they  builded 

viii 


PREFACE 

better  than  they  knew,  and  that  its  supreme 
meaning  is  now  and  always  a  thing  not  of  an- 
cient history,  but  of  the  living  present.  On  this 
assumption  it  is,  the  assumption  that  the  germ 
connotes  the  far  organism,  that  this  volume  is 
made.  It  assumes,  what  the  testing  fact  abun- 
dantly proves,  that  over  the  individual  thinking 
of  the  sages  there  presided  always  an  organic 
teleology,  which  revealed  itself  both  by  positive 
enlargement  and  negative  censorship,  until  out  of 
common  life  elements  it  gradually  evolved  that 
manhood  adultness  of  sagacity,  that  supreme 
philosophy  of  life,  which  St.  Paul  calls  "the  wis- 
dom of  God,"  and  St.  James  "the  wisdom  that 
is  from  above."  As  such,  it  is  an  authentic  strain 
of  revelation;  as  truly  so  as  if  God  Himself  had 
imparted  it  in  statutory  form  to  Moses,  or  as  if 
an  inspired  seer  had  verified  it  with  "Thus  saith 
the  Lord." 

To  say  this  is  to  raise  no  quarrel  with  the  pre- 
vailing criticism;  with  which  in  fact  we  are  heart- 
ily at  one  both  in  spirit  and  in  inductive  caution. 
It  is  merely  to  take  position  at  another  point  of 
its  orbit,  and  to  work  out  its  problem  from  an- 
other class  of  data.  Our  quest,  too,  is  one  of  his- 
toric fact,  but  of  that  higher  order  of  fact  which 
we  term  values.  And  as  the  Hebrew  Wisdom  is 

iz 


PREFACE 

so  purely  and  naively  a  literature,  these  values 
are  in  the  large  sense  literary  values.  As  such 
they  reflect  the  spirit  of  the  whole  man.  Historic 
events,  folk-lore,  industrialism,  commercialism, 
academic  philosophy,  even  religion,  while  all  on 
occasion  contribute  their  quota,  are  none  of  them 
spacious  enough  to  fill  them  out,  because  none 
of  them,  separately,  contain  more  than  partial 
values  of  life.  Our  sense  of  these  literary  values, 
taking  a  larger  scope,  includes  whatever  these 
sages,  accredited  men  of  letters  as  they  were, 
wrought  out  by  their  creative  and  artistic  sense, 
as  they  were  concerned  to  bring  the  best  that 
was  in  them  and  the  best  that  is  in  life  to  vital 
expression.  Thus  in  a  liberal  circuit  which  com- 
prehends not  form  and  style  alone,  but  theme 
and  aim  and  spiritual  power,  our  quest  for  the 
meaning  of  Hebrew  Wisdom  resolves  itself  into 
a  literary  study. 

On  one  point  it  takes  scant  note  of  what  men 
have  hitherto  been  pleased  to  call  the  literary 
study  of  the  Bible,  —  which  rather  has  been 
mainly  a  study  of  the  outworks  and  extrinsic 
preliminaries  of  literature.  Our  concern  is  not 
so  much  with  glosses,  various  readings,  and  crude 
first  editions,  as  with  the  Bible  that  lies  before  us, 
its  various  components  finished  and  transmitted, 

x 


PREFACE 

by  whatever  vicissitudes  these  assumed  their 
present  shapes.  We  are  willing  to  take  the  Book 
of  Job  as  St.  James  read  it,  and  as  it  has  wrought 
its  full  influence  on  the  later  ages,  with  the  Elihu 
parts  and  the  twenty-eighth  chapter  in  place. 
We  do  not  contemn  what  the  Gospel  of  John  says, 
even  though  it  were  proved  to  be  a  Gnosticized 
tractate  of  the  second  century.  The  body  of 
Wisdom  thinking  as  all  the  generations  have 
contributed  to  it,  editorial  additions,  maturer 
conceptions,  and  all,  is  our  sufficing  monument. 
The  tangled  and  dubious  lines  of  its  development 
have  long  ago  met  in  unity  and  solution  higher 
up;  a  solution  which,  on  my  scale  of  estimate, 
is  far  beyond  the  keen  and  well-nigh  abnormal 
sense  for  discrepancies  which  at  present  prevails. 
The  Bible  has  wrought  its  work  through  the 
centuries  as  a  final  and  definitive  edition,  whose 
worth,  is  not  necessarily  invalidated  by  the  en- 
larged and  refined  conceptions  which  later  inter- 
pretation has  infused  into  it.  All  these  latter  are 
to  be  judged  not  on  their  history  alone,  but  on 
their  merits  and  their  truth.  They  belong,  in  fact, 
for  their  time,  to  the  same  order  of  present  and 
clarified  meanings,  to  which  the  study  of  this 
latest  day  aims  to  contribute.  The  whole  Wisdom 
course,  we  may  say,  is  a  progressive  reopening 

xi 


PREFACE 

of  the  question,  what  do  these  utterances  of  life 
mean  ?  what  do  they  mean  now  ? 

In  such  light  as  this,  as  will  be  seen,  all  the 
prevailing  clutter  and  clatter  of  glosses  and  read- 
ings and  displacements  and  discrepancies  fall 
into  a  very  insignificant  background.  They  need 
to  be  recognized  in  their  essential  pettiness  for 
just  what  they  are,  but  not  to  set  the  measure 
and  spirit  of  our  estimate,  or  usurp  the  emphasis 
that  belongs  to  larger  values.  Charles  Lamb, 
with  his  fine  reverence  for  what  men  have  thought 
and  put  into  books,  may  perhaps  speak  a  useful 
word  here.  "It  seems,"  he  says  of  the  ancient 
books,  "as  though  all  the  souls  of  all  the  writers, 
that  have  bequeathed  their  labors  to  these  Bod- 
leians,  were  reposing  here,  as  in  some  dormitory, 
or  middle  state.  I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to 
profane  the  leaves,  their  winding  sheets.  I  could 
as  soon  dislodge  a  shade.  .  .  .  The  odor  of  their 
old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant  as  the 
first  bloom  of  those  sciential  apples  which  grew 
amid  the  happy  orchard.  Still  less  have  I  curi- 
osity to  disturb  the  elder  repose  of  MSS.  Those 
varies  lectiones,  so  tempting  to  the  more  erudite 
palates,  do  but  disturb  and  unsettle  my  faith.  I 
am  no  Herculanean  raker.  ...  I  leave  these 
curiosities  to  Porson,  and  to  G.  D."  This  may 

xii 


PREFACE 

seem  to  strike  a  discordant  note  for  the  present- 
day  critic,  or  to  be  but  a  whim  of  sentiment; 
but  we  do  not  ill  to  take  note  of  the  love  of, 
and  intimate  communion  with,  the  real  spirit 
of  literature  which  inheres  with  it,  that  sense  of 
inner  values  which  resolves  every  time-honored 
concept  as  it  were  into  a  poem.  There  are  new 
discoveries  yet  to  make  for  him  who  approaches 
the  thinking  mind  of  man  in  such  reverence  and 
sympathy. 

Following  with  such  sympathy  the  expanding 
experience  of  man,  as  we  see  him  with  analo- 
gies and  antitheses  and  pithy  maxims  reducing 
his  vision  of  life  to  form  and  relation,  we  may 
confidently  say  the  venerable  Hebrew  Wisdom 
means  "all  that."  It  means  indeed  much  more; 
but  a  single  volume,  ranging  over  six  whole  books 
of  scripture  and  parts  of  several  others,  cannot 
well  undertake  to  say  much  more.  A  treatment 
of  such  scope  must  confine  itself  to  the  salient 
things,  the  main  and  massive  lines  of  meaning; 
in  the  endeavor  so  to  stake  these  out  that  the 
wealth  of  detailed  counsel  which  must  needs  go 
untouched  may  have  a  common  rally  ing-ground 
and  point  de  repere,  so  that  the  general  readers 
for  whom  scripture  truth  is  designed  may  be  in 
position  to  realize  its  large  bearings  for  them- 

xiii 


PREFACE 

selves.    Such  in  the  main  is  what  is  endeavored 
in  this  rapid  synthesis. 

Readers  of  my  other  books,  "The  Epic  of  the 
Inner  Life,"  and  "Words  of  Koheleth,"  will  at 
once  be  aware  of  the  direct  relation  of  this  volume 
to  them.  It  is  in  the  same  scripture  stratum;  is 
in  fact  merely  an  expansion  and  compendious 
placing  of  the  same  theme,  carrying  it  on,  in  re- 
duced scale,  to  the  whole  subject  of  which  these 
books  are  components.  For  the  extended  exposi- 
tion thus  connoted  it  became  evident  to  me,  as 
soon  as  a  fundamental  study  of  these  books  re- 
vealed their  broad  import,  that  the  way  was  clearly 
open.  The  books  of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  though 
not  in  either  the  legal  or  the  prophetic  vein,  are 
by  no  means  isolated  works;  we  cannot  say  of 
either  of  them,  as  I  once  heard  a  Biblical  scholar 
characterize  the  latter  named  book,  that  it  is  a 
"boulder,"  dislodged  somehow  from  the  great 
terminal  moraine  of  revealed  truth  and  lying  un- 
related. Rather,  they  are  accurately  fitted  pieces 
of  a  great  spiritual  mosaic,  "lively  stones,"  to 
adopt  St.  Peter's  phrase,  in  a  stately  edifice  of 
their  own;  of  which  mosaic,  of  which  edifice,  it  is 
our  present  object  to  give  the  pattern  and  dimen- 
sions. Elsewhere  (see  "Words  of  Koheleth," 
pp.  147-156)  I  have  ventured  to  outline  this  large 

xiv 


PREFACE 

plan  in  what  I  have  called  a  map  of  life;  of 
which  outline  this  volume  is  in  great  part  an 
expansion.  It  will  thus  appear  that  the  Hebrew 
Wisdom,  growing  as  a  unitary  strain,  an  organic 
and  as  it  were  dramatic  sequence,  to  rounded 
finish  and  culmination  in  the  fulness  of  the  time, 
is  regarded  as  an  integral  strand  of  scripture  reve- 
lation, coordinate  with  the  strands  of  law  and 
prophecy,  yet  complete  in  itself,  in  the  single  yet 
compositely  twined  idea  for  which  the  Bible  ulti- 
mately stands. 

As  befits  the  literary  approach  employed  by  Wis- 
dom itself,  whose  ways  are  not  the  severe  ways 
of  a  philosophy,  but  the  limpid  ways  of  analogy 
and  telling  phrase  and  imagery,  my  treatment  is 
frankly  in  the  literary  tone  and  feeling,  with  the 
informality  and  something  of  the  discursiveness 
of  literature,  and  with  frequent  reference  to  the 
literary  parallels  and  illustrations  with  which  in 
these  modern  times  readers  are  conversant.  I 
have  been,  indeed,  at  some  pains  to  avoid  that 
technical  and  academic  tone  which  is  sure  to  in- 
vade any  study  as  soon  as  it  becomes  self-con- 
scious and  specialized.  In  this  I  have  followed 
a  conviction  which,  I  am  persuaded,  is  of  im- 
portance for  the  future  of  Bible  appreciation  and 
realization.  While,  in  the  great  movements  of  our 

xv 


PREFACE 

age,  the  scientific  temper  has  sharpened  men's 
sense  and  demand  for  fact,  until  this  has  almost 
monopolized  the  field,  another  sense,  the  sense  for 
values,  though  equally  the  outcome  of  an  age- 
movement,  has  been  much  slower  to  come  to  its 
own.  Especially  is  this  true  of  Biblical  apprecia- 
tion; which  thus  far  has  merely  exchanged  its  old 
theological  sense  of  things  for  the  archaeological. 
Meanwhile  literary  and  spiritual  values,  borne  on 
the  tremendous  educational  wave,  are  making 
their  way  into  the  common  consciousness  in  other 
subjects  of  thought,  and  by  the  universally  dif- 
fused literary  agencies,  —  fiction,  poetry,  criticism, 
popular  address,  —  until  the  rank  and  file  of  men 
are  almost  forgetting  that  a  venerable  and  suf- 
ficing archetype  of  these  already  exists,  and  in 
sheer  ignoring  of  this  fact  are  well-nigh  at  the 
point  of  creating  a  substitutionary  Bible.  It  is 
time  that  this  eternal  monument  of  literature  had 
its  due  in  the  idiom  that  is  to-day  vital.  In  this 
conviction  it  is  that  I  have  here  endeavored  to 
stamp  the  results  of  my  studies  with  the  literary 
coinage. 

Nor  can  another  feature  of  the  volume,  quite 
in  line  with  this  and  with  the  friendly  counsel  of 
Wisdom,  well  be  disguised :  the  fact  that  it  is  con- 
ceived and  composed  as  if  for  an  audience,  and 

xvi 


PREFACE 

with  the  freedom  and  immediacy  of  oral  address. 
The  volume  originated,  in  fact,  in  a  course  of  lec- 
tures. This  course,  as  written  out,  was  given  on 
three  several  occasions:  before  the  Providence 
Biblical  Institute  in  1904;  before  an  audience 
of  Amherst  neighbors  in  1905;  and  before  the 
Twentieth  Century  Club,  Boston,  in  1906.  To 
these  more  formal  courses  may  be  added  the 
traversing  of  the  ground  with  a  Bible-study  class 
in  the  Old  South  Church,  Boston,  during  the 
winter  of  1904-05.  In  each  successive  presenta- 
tion the  lectures  were  revised  and  somewhat  ex- 
tended, beginning  with  six  and  ending  with  eight, 
as  the  repeated  survey  of  the  subject  seemed  to 
demand. 

In  a  treatment  so  broadly  compendious  as  this 
there  is  little  if  any  occasion  to  insist  on  an 
amended  translation  or  a  corrected  text  of  Bible 
passages.  The  King  James  Version,  which  has 
had  most  to  do  with  shaping  men's  realization  of 
scripture  truth,  is  for  the  most  part  accurate 
enough  to  support  the  large  literary  estimate. 
In  the  citations  from  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  how- 
ever, I  have  availed  myself  of  my  own  translation, 
made  for  my  treatises  on  those  books;  and  for  the 
Apocryphal  Wisdom  I  have  used  the  Revised  Ver- 
sion. The  citations  from  Proverbs  do  not  follow 

xvii 


PREFACE 

any  one  version  consistently;  the  wording  that 
best  preserved  the  spirit  and  interrelations  of 
Wisdom  seemed  in  each  case  the  one  to  use. 

A  feeling  that  comes  over  every  sincere  student 
of  Bible  truth  in  these  times  may  here  be  left 
on  record;  one  that  inspires  far  more  than  it  dis- 
heartens. It  is  the  feeling  that  any  books  we  write, 
however  fundamentally  studied,  are  after  all 
merely  books  pour  servir;  answering  a  temporary 
purpose,  while  all  the  while,  and  by  means  of 
the  very  contributions  they  make,  a  more  majes- 
tic vision  of  things  is  coming  progressively  into 
view,  which  will  soon  make  these  little  endeavors 
either  obsolete  or  obvious  matters  of  course.  Both 
these  results  are  a  sequel  not  to  be  deprecated 
but  devoutly  to  be  wished.  For  new  light  is  break- 
ing forth,  with  almost  startling  rapidity,  from 
scripture;  new  windows  of  heaven  opening  for 
every  new  window  of  earth;  this  is  true  in  our 
own  time  in  a  sense  beyond  what  the  world  has 
known  for  centuries.  If  in  however  lowly  degree 
the  present  volume  may  contribute  some  little 
ray  to  this  increasing  light,  even  though  as  soon 
as  it  is  born  it  begins  to  die  into  the  larger  radi- 
ance that  is  surely  dawning,  the  most  fervent 
hope  of  the  author  will  be  realized.  For  he  can 
conceive  of  no  nobler  occupation  of  the  scholar 

xviii 


PREFACE 

than  that  which,  as  it  inspired  the  ancient  sages 
about  whom  he  has  written,  has  still  the  same 
power  to  draw  men  to  the  heights  of  eternal  truth 
and  vision;  while,  noting  how  the  wise  of  old 
have  grown  in  sureness  of  insight  and  prophecy, 
these,  too,  strive,  according  to  their  ripened  wis- 
dom, to  "copy  fair  what  time  hath  blur'd." 

JOHN  FRANKLIN  GENUNG. 

AMHERST,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
September  2,  1906. 


CONTENTS 

i 

THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES  I 

II 
THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE  51 

III 

STRAIGHT  WISDOM  89 

As  embodied  mainly  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs 

IV 

THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE  143 

As  made  by  the  Book  of  Job 

V 

THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK  197 

As  made  by  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes 

VI 

THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS  249 

As  exemplified  in  Jesus  Sirach  and  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon 

VII 

THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD  299 

As  revealed  in  the  Discourses  and  Parables  of  Jesus 

VIII 

As  BETWEEN  BROTHERS  355 

The  substance  and  tone  of  the  Epistle  of  James 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE 

SAGES 


TO  PENETRATE  THE  DISGUISE  OF  TIME 

I.  The  sages  in  the  Hebrew  nation. 

II.  Status  of  their  books  in  the  Hebrew  canon. 

III.  Their  Wisdom  compared  with  current  philosophy. 

IV.  Its  literary  dynamic. 

V.    How  the  order  of  sages  rose  and  prospered. 


THE  HEBREW  LITERATURE 
OF  WISDOM 

I 

THE  WISDOM   FIELD,  AND  THE   SAGES 


r  "^O  three  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
canon  and  two  of  the  Apocrypha  has 
-M.  been  given  the  collective  name  of  the 
Wisdom  books,  or  the  Wisdom  literature.  These 
are:  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  the  Book  of  Job,  the 
Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  in  the  Apocrypha  the 
Wisdom  of  Jesus  the  Son  of  Sirach,  otherwise 
called  Ecclesiasticus,  and  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon. 
Some  add  to  this  list  the  Song  of  Solomon;  this, 
however,  not  because  the  book  is  in  the  Wisdom 
strain,  but  because,  having  confessedly  no  other 
disposal  to  make  of  it,  they  class  it  with  the  other 
writings  associated  with  King  Solomon's  name. 
This  reason  is  obviously  too  slender  for  us  to 
respect,  if  we  would  reduce  our  group  of  books 
to  the  unity  and  relation  connoted  by  the  common 
name  Wisdom.  We  may  properly  disregard  the 
Song  of  Solomon,  therefore,  as  not  belonging  to 
our  subject. 

3 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

From  a  review  of  these  five  books,  then,  to- 
gether with  such  other  parts  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  as  are  in  the  same  specific  vein,  our 
endeavor  shall  be  to  get  a  view  of  Hebrew  Wis- 
dom in  its  large  literary  and  spiritual  values ; 
so  identifying  it  the  while  with  what  is  vital  in 
our  modern  thinking  and  literature  as  to  realize 
its  perennial  appeal  to  the  living  heart  of  man. 
The  distinctive  name  that  they  have  earned  is 
our  warrant  for  assuming  that  these  books  have  a 
unitary  and  organic  character  of  their  own.  They 
have  proved  their  power  historically  by  millen- 
niums of  undiminished  life;  our  business  now  is  to 
judge,  by  the  data  which  prevail  in  the  world  of 
to-day,  whether  this  ought  to  be  so. 

Our  review,  while  taking  constant  note  of  how 
this  Wisdom  got  itself  into  literary  form,  is  con- 
cerned with  this  only  as  a  means  to  an  end.  The 
end  is  the  steadily  enlarging  and  developing  idea, 
and  what  it  leads  to.  The  treatment  shall  be  not 
so  much  historical  as  expository;  or  rather,  if  it 
may  sometimes  seem  to  pay  too  scant  respect  to 
that  all-prevailing  historic  method  which  a  recent 
writer  has  called  "  the  death  of  clear  exposition," 
it  may  yet  aspire  to  trace  that  deeper  history,  or 
evolution,  which  belongs  to  the  tides  of  the  spirit. 
We  are  concerned,  in  fact,  with  an  important 

4 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

chapter  in  the  history  of  personality,  of  the  growth 
of  strong  and  rounded  manhood.  One  essential 
strain  of  that  developing  personality  is  the  intel- 
lectual and  educative;  the  awakening  of  the  mind 
to  life  as  it  is,  and  the  working  of  ideals  clear 
from  the  fogs  and  evils  that  beset  them.  This,  as 
expressed  in  the  idiom  of  the  Hebrew  mind  and 
character,  is  the  meaning  of  the  inquiry  before  us. 


These  Wisdom  books  are  representative  writ- 
ings of  a  class  of  men  of  whom  otherwise  little  is 
known;  less,  perhaps,  than  is  known  of  any  other 
class  of  writers  or  leaders.  Whether,  like  scribes 
and  rabbis,  the  Wise  Men  or  Sages  constituted  a 
distinct  order,  recognized  and  honored  as  such; 
whether  a  kind  of  official  authority  was  accorded  to 
them  in  the  make-up  of  the  national  life;  whether 
they  formed  a  quasi-university  fellowship,  wherein 
they  passed  examinations  and  took  degrees; 
whether  their  profession  of  Wisdom  was  also  a 
livelihood,  in  which  like  a  modern  lawyer  they 
gave  counsel  and  took  fees,  —  are  matters  concern- 
ing which  we  can  do  no  more  than  infer  or  con- 
jecture. But  that  they  had  a  distinctive  standing 
in  the  nation,  that  in  their  sphere  they  were  an 
acknowledged  influence  in  society,  seems  indi- 

5 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

cated  in  the  clearest  reference  that  we  have  to 
them,  a  verse  in  Jeremiah.  "Then  said  they," 
—  namely,  certain  perverse  people  whom  the 
prophet's  words  had  irritated,  —  "  Come,  and  let 
us  devise  devices  against  Jeremiah;  for  the  law 
shall  not  perish  from  the  priest,  nor  counsel  from 
the  wise,  nor  the  word  from  the  prophet."  Here 
the  wise  are  mentioned  as  a  kind  of  order,  co- 
ordinate with  that  of  priests  and  prophets,  and 
having  their  function  reckoned  as  in  its  way  au- 
thoritative by  the  side  of  the  priests'  law  and  the 
prophets'  burden.  They  were,  it  appears,  coun- 
sellors, advisers,  men  to  whom  the  people  resorted 
for  a  kind  of  guidance  not  provided  for  in  the 
Mosaic  ordinances  which  the  priests  had  in  charge, 
nor  in  the  impassioned  appeals  addressed  to  the 
nation  at  large  by  the  prophets.  A  third  order  of 
leadership  was  in  fact  needed. 

The  field  for  this  order  of  sages  to  cultivate  was 
such  as  lies  at  the  heart  of  common  humanity 
everywhere.  There  is  the  sphere  of  living  in  which 
not  the  nation  is  primarily  concerned,  but  the  indi- 
vidual; not  the  church,  but  the  home:  the  sphere 
of  industry  and  business,  of  prosperity  and  success, 
of  social  behavior  and  social  honor,  of  tactful 
speech  and  prudent  dealing.  A  most  momentous 
sphere  this;  the  sphere  in  which  through  the 

6 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

wisely  educated  individual  a  nation's  character  is 
made  sound  and  sterling  from  within.  It  was  to 
this  personal  unit,  this  primal  nucleus  of  the  cor- 
porate life,  that  the  sages  addressed  themselves; 
as  one  of  their  maxims  expresses  it:  — 

"  If  thou  art  wise,  thou  art  wise  for  thyself, 
And  if  thou  art  a  scoffer,  thou  alone  must  bear  it." 

It  is  interesting  to  come  across  a  class  of  men  who 
are  engaged  in  this  subsoiling  educative  work, 
content  for  that  to  bury  themselves  in  parish  and 
neighborhood  affairs;  and  who  are  honored  for 
their  work's  sake,  rather  than  for  the  fame  they 
get  or  the  office  they  hold. 

These  sages,  it  would  seem,  at  least  to  begin 
with,  gave  their  counsel  mostly  by  word  of  mouth, 
and  not  from  some  central  bureau  or  university, 
but  here  and  there  among  the  people,  where  they 
were  in  close  touch  with  practical  life.  When  they 
wrote,  they  wrote  anonymously,  or  else  hid  their 
individuality  under  the  name  and  prestige  of  King 
Solomon.  Their  writings  were  not  chanted  in  the 
Temple,  nor  read  officially  in  the  synagogues. 
Homely  maxims  as  these  were,  a  humbler  but 
more  potent  and  pervasive  mission  was  theirs:  to 
circulate  among  those  common  work-day  folk 
whose  thoughts  centre  in  concrete  tasks  and  trials, 

7 


and  to  whom,  as  men  who  want  their  literary 
pabulum  pithy  and  to  the  point,  we  may  apply 
George  Herbert's  words :  — 

"A  verse  may  find  him  who  a  Sermon  flies, 
And  turn  delight  into  a  Sacrifice." 

The  literature  of  Wisdom,  whether  oral  or  written, 
was  a  literature  immediate,  practical,  portable. 

In  brief,  the  Hebrew  sages,  however  penetrative 
their  counsel  actually  was,  did  not  aim  to  be  the 
academic  philosophers  of  the  few,  but  the  neigh- 
borly counsellors  of  the  many.  Their  utterances, 
more  nearly  than  any  others  in  Scripture,  approach 
the  popular  vein;  and  this  because  they  deal  with 
the  kind  of  thought  most  accessible  to  the  average 
man.  They  are  the  common  man's  vade  mecum 
of  life.  What  Cardinal  Newman  ascribes  to  his 
ideal  great  author  may  in  one  trait  be  applied  to 
the  ideal  sage  of  the  olden  Hebrew  times:  "He 
expresses  what  all  feel,  but  all  cannot  say;  and  his 
sayings  pass  into  proverbs  among  his  people,  and 
his  phrases  become  household  words  and  idioms 
of  their  daily  speech,  which  is  tessellated  with 
the  rich  fragments  of  his  language,  as  we  see  in 
foreign  lands  the  marbles  of  Roman  grandeur 
worked  into  the  walls  and  pavements  of  modern 
palaces." 

8 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

Do  not  deem  that  I  am  trying  to  draw  a  fanci- 
ful picture  of  this  class  of  counsellors  and  maxim- 
makers.  I  am  merely  looking  for  substantial  facts. 
We  have  doubtless  only  a  fragment  of  their  work, 
relatively,  to  judge  them  by;  but  of  those  three 
canonical  books  which  now  represent  them,  the 
Book  of  Proverbs  stands  immeasurably  above  any 
other  collection  of  aphorisms;  the  Book  of  Job  is 
justly  reckoned  one  of  the  supreme  literary  crea- 
tions of  the  ages;  and  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes, 
with  its  gloom  and  its  cheer,  is  a  book  whose 
power  even  to-day  to  amaze  and  fascinate  exceeds 
that  of  the  most  vaunted  modern  authors.  A 
strain  of  literature  which  can  make  such  a  pro- 
portional showing  in  the  world's  inventory  of 
authorship  must  have  some  corresponding  func- 
tion in  that  large  "business  of  life"  which,  as 
Stevenson  maintains,  "is  mainly  carried  on  by 
means  of  this  difficult  art  of  literature." 

Here  lies,  in  fact,  the  kernel  of  our  present 
inquiry.  A  strain  of  literature,  we  say;  yet  we 
refer  it  to  an  order  of  men  who  were  concerned 
with  "wise  saws  and  modern  instances,"  with 
maxims  coined  for  the  hour  and  the  emergency. 
Why  then  a  strain,  and  how  ?  In  other  words,  we 
want  to  see  if  as  a  strain,  as  a  unitary  body  of 
utterance,  Hebrew  Wisdom  has  some  large  organic 

9 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

idea  whose  development  we  can  trace.  We  want 
to  find,  if  we  may,  what,  as  a  class  in  Hebrew 
life  and  thought,  the  order  of  sages  stood  for. 
They  were  doing  a  much  needed  work,  down  there 
at  the  roots  of  society;  and  our  natural  inquiry 
is,  whether  this  was  done  sporadically,  single- 
handedly,  dispersedly,  as  the  individual  whim 
or  impulse  seized  each  man;  or  whether,  as  the 
periods  of  their  activity  advanced,  they  struck 
into  common  ground,  and,  going  forward  side  by 
side  like  explorers,  kept  track  of  the  way  already 
traversed  and  the  common  direction,  and  sig- 
nalled to  each  other  as  they  marched  through  the 
tangled  woods  of  experience  toward  the  open 
beyond.  Is  there  a  unity  of  spirit,  a  characterizing 
esprit  de  corps,  traceable  through  their  utterances, 
and  perhaps  growing  in  concentration  and  system, 
from  that  squad  of  wise  men,  Ethan  and  Heman 
and  Chalcol  and  Darda,  who  surrounded  King 
Solomon,  and  with  whom  he  himself  worked, 
down  to  the  latest  writer,  almost  contemporary 
with  Christ,  who  still  named  Solomon  as  his  lit- 
erary sponsor  ?  This  question  reveals  the  true 
import  of  our  present  study;  and  the  answer  to 
it  is  what  makes  our  subject  a  subject  indeed,  a 
synthesis,  and  not  a  mere  pretext  for  assembling 
historical  information. 

10 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

ii 

The  sages'  department  of  the  Bible  itself  merits 
a  few  words  in  our  effort  to  place  them. 

The  arrangement  of  books  in  the  Hebrew  Bible 
does  not  exactly  correspond  to  the  arrangement 
familiar  to  us  in  our  Authorized  Version;  wherein, 
after  the  historical  books,  come  first  the  so-called 
poetical  books,  and  then  the  prophets  great 
and  minor,  ending  with  Malachi.  The  Hebrew 
arrangement,  on  the  other  hand,  reflects,  in  the 
large,  the  sense  that  the  Jewish  scholars  had,  as 
they  made  up  their  canon,  of  the  relative  religious 
values  of  the  successive  groups  of  books.  Our 
Lord  names  the  threefold  cleavage  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  as  it  was  generally  recognized  in  his  time, 
in  his  remark  about  "all  things  .  .  .  which  were 
written  in  the  law  of  Moses,  and  in  the  pro- 
phets, and  in  the  psalms  [so  named  from  the  first 
book  of  the  third  division]  concerning  me ;  "  and 
Jesus  Sirach  similarly  mentions  "the  law,  and  the 
prophets,  and  the  other  books  of  our  fathers."1 
These  three  departments  of  the  Bible  had  on  the 
Jewish  religious  and  doctrinal  estimate  much  the 
effect  of  three  refluent  surges,  or  waves,  of  spirit- 
ual authority.  But  with  this  sense  was  interwoven, 

1  Luke  xxiv,  44;   Ecclus.  Prologue. 
II 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

dimly  but  on  the  whole  accurately,  a  sense  of  the 
progress  of  the  human  spirit,  as  by  successive 
stages,  from  the  law  of  the  nation  or  species  to  the 
law  of  the  individual.  Professor  Shaler,  in  his 
scientific  study  of  this  steady  advance  of  man, 
remarks:  "It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  on 
this  individualizing  process  depends  all  the  real 
work  that  is  done  within  the  universe." l  This 
same  individualizing  process  it  is  that  is  reflected, 
in  its  sphere,  in  the  make-up  of  the  Hebrew  canon; 
as  we  shall  see  by  a  glance  at  its  three  strata. 

Most  valued  of  all,  as  the  original  source  of  the 
national  character  and  worship,  was,  as  it  still 
is,  the  Mosaic  law  with  its  accompanying  history, 
or,  as  the  Jews  called  it,  the  Torah;  which  word 
Professor  Siegfried  defines,  according  to  his  too 
narrow  and  rudimental  view,  decision  by  oracle, 
referring,  perhaps,  to  the  high-priestly  methods 
of  divination ;  a  definition  too  rudimental,  I  say, 
because  the  Torah  idea  was  immensely  larger 
than  this,  taking  in,  as  it  came  to  do,  all  the  direc- 
tions of  life  which  were  recognized  as  coming  from 
God,  whether  through  oracle  or  through  teachers 
and  lawgivers.2  It  was  this  Torah,  or  law,  which 

1  Shaler,  The  Individual,  p.  15. 

7  Siegfried,  in  Hastings,  Bible  Dictionary,  art.  Wisdom.  See 
by  way  of  correction,  Beecher,  The  Prophets  and  the  Promise, 
pp.  139  sqq. 

12 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

figured  supremely  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  Tem- 
ple, in  the  interpretative  work  of  the  scribes,  and 
in  the  scrupulous  piety  of  the  Pharisees;  a  kind 
of  colossal  police  regulation  and  religious  code  for 
the  Hebrew  race.  Next  to  this  in  esteem  came  the 
body  of  fervid  prophecy,  again  with  its  accom- 
panying history;  which,  though  its  immediate 
occasion  in  national  affairs  passed,  was  still  read 
in  the  synagogues,  and  cherished  as  a  kind  of  spir- 
itual dynamic,  fitly  offsetting  the  too  mechanical 
tendencies  of  law.  The  third  division,  which  from 
its  opening  book  our  Lord  referred  to  as  the 
Psalms,  is  the  one  in  which  all  our  Wisdom  books 
are  contained.  Its  Hebrew  name,  K'thubim,  "writ- 
ings," indicates  that  this  third  collection  of  books 
was  regarded  as  a  miscellany  of  things  unclassi- 
fiable,  or  left  over  after  the  other  collections  were 
made.  And  this  is  just  what  it  was.  It  was  sup- 
posed to  occupy  a  lower  religious,  or  at  least  ritual 
and  dogmatic  plane;  its  authority  was  less  bind- 
ing than  that  of  the  two  main  collections;  being 
made  up  so  much  later  as  still  to  have  retained 
something  of  the  doubtfulness  attaching  to  books 
of  the  day.  It  contained  some  books,  notably  Ec- 
clesiastes  and  Esther,  whose  right  to  a  place  in  the 
sacred  canon  was  seriously  questioned  for  many 
years.  Both  of  these  last  named  books,  however, 

13 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

and  three  others,  the  five  called  collectively  the 
Rolls,  were  so  popularly  esteemed  as  to  be  selected 
for  reading  in  the  synagogues  on  feast  days:  the 
Song  of  Songs  at  the  Passover,  Ruth  at  Pente- 
cost, Lamentations  on  the  anniversary  of  the  Fall 
of  Jerusalem,  Ecclesiastes  at  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles, and  Esther  at  the  Feast  of  Purim.  Outside 
of  these  five  little  rolls,  and  the  Book  of  Psalms, 
which  latter,  being  the  Hebrew  anthem-book, 
would  of  course  be  in  constant  public  service,  the 
books  of  this  third  scripture  division,  Job  and 
Proverbs  with  the  rest,  were  not  put  to  any  public 
or  ceremonial  use,  but  survived  as  they  were  read 
and  valued  privately. 

All  this  indicates,  however,  not  that  the  sages' 
work,  the  Wisdom  literature,  was  little  accounted 
of,  or  less  familiarly  known.  It  simply  means  that 
the  estimate  attached  to  it  was  of  another  and  per- 
haps even  more  intimate  kind.  Wisdom  was  the 
one  department  of  canonical  literature,  among  the 
Hebrews,  which  did  not  insist  on  its  divine  origin 
and  function.  The  law  was  referred  directly  back 
to  the  God  of  Sinai.  It  prefaced  all  its  enact- 
ments with,  "And  the  Lord  spake  unto  Moses;" 
or  else,  if  a  special  need  required  special  direction, 
the  priest  was  supposed  to  get  a  divine  oracle 
from  the  Urim  and  Thummim  of  his  breastplate 

14 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

The  word  of  prophecy  made  a  similar  claim  to 
the  dictation  of  heaven:  "Thus  saith  the  Lord." 
But  here  was  a  kind  of  utterance  that  did  not 
set  up  the  claim  to  anything  more  authoritative 
than  good  sense  and  sound  reason.  It  was  the 
pronouncement  of  sagacious  men  on  the  world  of 
secular  activities  as  they  saw  it;  the  principles  of 
management  and  character  that  the  sanest  think- 
ing had  come  to  recognize.  To  such  literature  as 
this,  men,  and  especially  laymen,  could  come  for 
its  intrinsic  interest  and  value;  not  because  obliga- 
tion was  laid  upon  them,  but  because  they  were 
inwardly  drawn  to  it;  could  come  without  first 
getting  their  minds  into  a  sanctuary  attitude,  and 
feeling  that  faith  or  infidelity,  orthodoxy  or  heresy, 
were  involved  in  their  reception  of  it.  Entering 
thus  with  unmortgaged  judgment  and  free-moving 
spirit  into  the  thoughts  of  the  proverb  writers 
and  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  they  could  think  for 
themselves,  and  accept  or  question  as  their  rea- 
son dictated.  Their  attitude  toward  these  books,  I 
imagine,  was  something  like  Adam  Bede's  toward 
the  non-canonical  Wisdom  book,  Ecclesiasticus. 
He  would  read  the  canonical  books  with  a  very 
solemn  look,  feeling  the  absoluteness  of  their 
inspired  truth;  but  "when  he  read  in  the  Apoc- 
rypha, of  which  he  was  very  fond,  the  son  of 

'5 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

Sirach's  keen-edged  words  would  bring  a  delighted 
smile,  though  he  also  enjoyed  the  freedom  of  occa- 
sionally differing  from  an  Apocryphal  writer.  For 
Adam  knew  the  Articles  quite  well,  as  became  a 
good  churchman."  1 

In  a  word,  the  Wisdom  literature  is,  relatively, 
the  secular  department  of  the  Bible;  made  at  a 
time,  it  is  true,  when  the  lines  of  sacred  and  sec- 
ular were  not  sharply  or  even  consciously  drawn, 
and  by  a  people  whose  whole  life  had  a  felt  back- 
ground of  the  sacred;  but  dealing  with  affairs  of 
this  world  and  its  work,  and  calling  on  the  prac- 
tical self-reliant  activities  of  men.  In  it  we  hear 
the  accents  of  a  human  voice,  giving  counsel  for 
the  work  of  human  hands  and  brains,  making 
sound  reason  prevail  in  human  enterprises  alike 
secular  and  religious.  Rightly  considered,  it  con- 
tributes to  the  strength  and  beauty  of  both  the 
practical  and  the  worshipful  to  read  with  the 
primary  feeling,  not  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  but 
"Thus  saith  a  strong,  wise,  much-observing,  much- 
experienced,  much-sympathizing  man."  And  per- 
haps in  the  long  run  this  feeling  may  help  us 
appreciate  the  Lord's  word  itself  better;  nay,  who 
knows  but  the  man's  first-hand  insight  and  the 
Lord's  revelation  may  come  to  coalesce  and  be 

1  George  Eliot,  A  dam  Bede,  chap.  li. 

16 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

identical,  the  man's  reason  being  lifted  to  the 
higher  plane  where  he  can  see  divine  things  as 
they  are,  and  even  on  such  matters  speak  with 
real  authority  ?  This,  in  very  truth,  is  the  great 
discovery  that  we  shall  make  in  our  study  of 
scripture  Wisdom. 

in 

In  any  nation's  literature,  as  soon  as  we  pene- 
trate below  questions  of  form  and  artistic  word- 
ing, we  come  upon  the  distinctions  that  really 
count,  the  qualities  that  are  potent  to  determine  the 
various  classes  of  appreciators.  Each  reader  finds 
his  own;  each  mind  selects  its  peculiar  nourishing 
food.  There  is  the  literature  of  action  and  adven- 
ture; the  literature  of  grace  and  poetic  sentiment; 
the  literature  of  large  and  lofty  patriotism  or  im- 
passioned eloquence;  the  literature  of  severe  and 
close-woven  science:  each  having  its  own  idiom 
and  approach  to  things.  These  books  of  Hebrew 
Wisdom  embody,  for  their  age  and  race,  what 
in  our  nomenclature  would  be  called  philosophy. 
I  say  this,  it  will  be  noted,  guardedly;  because 
many  modern  scholars,  after  conceding  this  gen- 
eral classification,  hasten  to  assure  us  that,  if 
philosophy  at  all,  it  is  philosophy  with  a  radical 
difference.  Nay,  some  assert  that  its  very  nature 

17 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

excludes  from  it  everything  really  philosophical.1 
They  do  not  clearly  see,  it  would  seem,  how  to 
range  it  with  Plato  and  Aristotle  and  Kant  and 
Schopenhauer;  and  when  they  erect  a  Hall  of 
Fame  and  call  it  a  history  of  philosophy,  the  He- 
brew sages  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence.  The 
Hebrew  mind,  they  say,  was  not  speculative,  not 
philosophical;  and  for  the  Hebrews'  explanation 
of  the  causes  and  hidden  principles  of  things  they 
have  much  the  same  contempt,  a  contempt  in 
which  the  whole  Bible  shares,  that  Dr.  Johnson 
had  for  a  woman's  preaching.  "Sir,"  he  once 
said,  "a  woman's  preaching  is  like  a  dog's  walking 
on  his  hinder  legs.  It  is  not  done  well;  but  you 
are  surprised  to  find  it  done  at  all." 

Well,  to  be  sure,  we  must  grant  every  nation  its 
distinctive  genius.  It  is  more  natural,  as  St.  Paul 
says,  for  the  Jew  to  require  a  sign,  to  color  his 
thoughts  with  palpable  evidences  and  sanctions, 
than  like  the  Greek,  with  a  kind  of  dead-lift  of 
speculative  and  logical  insight,  to  seek  after  wis- 
dom. But  we  can  easily  get  too  narrow  an  idea  of 

1  On  the  ground  indicated  by  Siegfried,  Hastings,  Bible  Diction- 
ary, footnote  to  art.  Wisdom:  "Philosophy  proper  had  no  existence, 
and  could  have  none,  among  the  Hebrews.  A  process  of  thought  free 
from  presuppositions  was  unknown  to  them.  God  and  Divine  revela- 
tion were  accepted  as  fixed  points.  Accordingly,  all  that  was  aimed 
at  was  merely  to  penetrate  deeper  into  the  contents  of  what  was  given 
and  to  define  it  more  precisely." 

18 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

what  this  requiring  a  sign  means.  It  does  not  ne- 
cessarily mean  requiring  miracles;  all  that  makes 
it  include  this  is  the  fact  that  the  Hebrew  referred 
everything  ultimately  to  a  supernatural  source,  so 
that  every  sign  that  his  inquiry  was  on  the  right 
track  came  presumably  from  God.  It  might  be 
traceable  to  a  seen  cause,  or  ratified  in  natural 
effects;  but  the  Hebrew  waited  for  the  sign  that 
its  causes  or  effects  were  real,  instead  of  striking 
out  into  the  abyss  of  a  priori  reasoning.  And 
the  Wisdom  —  assume  it  for  the  moment  to  be 
a  philosophy  —  which  the  Hebrew  did  achieve 
took  a  character  of  its  own  from  this  racial  trait. 
Instead  of  soaring  off  in  clouds  of  metaphysics, 
as  if  the  principles  of  things  were  still  nebulous 
and  chaotic,  waiting  for  the  thinker  who  could 
shape  them,  it  clings  close  to  concrete  life,  to  the 
things  that  every  healthy  brain  can  see  and  judge, 
and  that  every  unscholared  man  can  interpret  to 
practical  purpose.  Of  course  we  can  see  how  very 
unphilosophical  a  procedure  this  is.  Instead  of 
using  up  all  its  motive  power  in  getting  its  machin- 
ery started,  —  absorbing  itself,  in  other  words,  in 
seeking  origins  and  building  cosmogonies  and 
speculating  on  causes,  —  it  takes  some  things 
frankly  for  granted,  —  God,  for  instance,  and  his 
understood  will,  and  his  ordered  care  of  the  world; 

19 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

or,  as  St.  Paul  expresses  it,  that  "the  invisible 
things  of  him  from  the  creation  of  the  world  are 
clearly  seen,  being  understood  by  the  things  that 
are  made,  even  his  eternal  power  and  Godhead."  * 
The  Hebrew  Wisdom  never  treated  this  as  an  open 
question  at  all;  it  went  on  from  this  to  mass  its 
energies  on  character  and  conduct.  In  a  deep 
sense  this  character  and  conduct,  this  capacity 
of  the  human  for  Godlikeness,  were  the  sign  that 
the  presupposition  is  so.  An  inquiry  that  thus 
produces  an  actual  fruitage  in  manhood  work 
looks  practical  enough;  but  we  can  see  what  a  sad 
handicap  this  result  is  to  its  being  counted  in 
the  imposing  rank  of  the  world's  philosophies. 
It  acts  too  much  as  if  some  things  in  the  universe 
might  be  regarded  as  already  plain  to  a  sound 
mind,  and  as  therefore  usable  for  practical  ends. 

This,  I  suspect,  is  really  the  estranging  feature 
which  has  hitherto  kept  men  from  attributing  to 
the  Hebrew  sage,  in  the  sense  which  they  accord  to 
Plato  and  Hegel,  the  constructing  of  a  veritable 
philosophy  of  life.  The  life  itself  bulks  so  much 
larger  than  the  getting  it  into  terms,  and  withal 
everything  is  so  plain  and  workable,  that  we  miss 
that  metaphysical  haze  which  the  name  philosophy 
is  so  apt  to  connote,  and  which  I  have  described 

1  Romans  i,  20. 
20 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

as  belonging  to  the  preliminary  process  of  get- 
ting the  speculative  machinery  in  working  order. 
Things  are  sometimes  best  illustrated,  as  Cardinal 
Newman  used  to  say,  by  caricature.  I  would  not 
be  understood,  therefore,  as  poking  satire  at  mod- 
ern philosophical  methods,  but  merely  as  giving 
sharper  point  to  a  distinction,  if  I  here  elucidate 
the  idea  I  am  defining  by  Carlyle's  humorous 
description  of  Coleridge's  marvellous  philosophiz- 
ing aptitude :  "  He  began  anywhere  :  you  put 
some  question  to  him,  made  some  suggestive  ob- 
servation: instead  of  answering  this,  or  decidedly 
setting  out  towards  answer  of  it,  he  would  accu- 
mulate formidable  apparatus,  logical  swim-blad- 
ders, transcendental  life-preservers,  and  other  pre- 
cautionary and  vehiculatory  gear,  for  setting  out; 
perhaps  did  at  last  get  under  way,  —  but  was 
swiftly  solicited,  turned  aside  by  the  glance  of 
some  radiant  new  game  on  this  hand  or  that,  into 
new  courses;  and  ever  into  new;  and  before  long 
into  all  the  Universe,  where  it  was  uncertain  what 
game  you  would  catch,  or  whether  any."  1  This 
accumulation  of  philosophical  apparatus,  to  Car- 
lyle's forthright  mind,  was  intolerable.  It  seemed 
to  be  going  through  such  elaborate  motions  of 
progress,  and  yet,  as  the  slang  phrase  is,  with 

Carlyle,  Life  of  John  Sterling,  Part  I,  chap.  viii. 
21 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

"nothing  doing,"  no  appreciable  output  of  result; 
—  or  as  Carlyle  words  it,  "what  you  were  to 
believe  or  do,  on  any  earthly  or  heavenly  thing, 
obstinately  refusing  to  appear  from  it." 

Now  my  philosopher  colleague  has  told  me 
that  this  is  all  you  can  rightly  expect  of  a  philoso- 
phy, from  the  nature  of  the  case:  that  its  primary 
business  is  merely  to  erect  the  plant,  so  to  say, 
and  furnish  it  with  the  newest  and  most  effi- 
cient machinery,  and  leave  the  actual  work  of  life- 
building  to  others.  He  maintains  also,  and  in  this 
he  is  not  alone,  that  the  Hebrews  were  not  truly  in 
the  philosophical  category,  because,  being  founded 
not  on  speculation  but  on  a  religious  and  sup- 
posedly revealed  tradition,  they  had  a  plant  and 
method  already  prescribed,  and  so  were  estopped 
from  philosophizing  their  way  through  life.  Well, 
be  it  so  now;  though  I  do  not  unqualifiedly  accept 
it.  To  attempt  answer  here  would  carry  us  too  far 
afield;  because  it  would  set  us  inquiring  what 
process  the  human  mind  goes  through  in  acquiring 
a  revelation,  and  whether,  after  all,  native  insight 
and  reason  were  not  so  concerned  in  it,  whenever 
it  came,  as  to  have  made  the  primal  truth,  which 
looked  so  objectively  miraculous,  a  truth  appre- 
hended in  an  authentic  sense  philosophically. 
Most  of  our  disputes,  you  know,  turn  ultimately 

22 


THE  WISDOM.  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

on  the  meaning  of  words;  and  we  are  much  in 
need  here  of  a  description,  in  the  light  of  to-day's 
idiom,  of  what  actually  took  place  in  the  Hebrew's 
mind  when  he  received  what  he  called  a  revela- 
tion. Maybe  it  was  identical  with  what  our  less 
emotional  nature  calls  a  thought  or  conviction, 
only  expressed,  according  to  his  race  and  tempera- 
ment, in  more  glowing  and  objective  terms,  or,  if 
you  please,  more  intuitively,  and  with  less  impedi- 
menta of  apparatus.  At  any  rate,  let  us  not,  as 
many  do,  fall  so  absolutely  into  the  attitude  of 
Hosea  Biglow's  politician,  — 

"  But  John  P. 
Robinson  he 
Sez  they  did  n't  know  everythin'  down  in  Judee,"  — 

as  lightly  to  conclude  they  did  n't  know  anything 
down  in  Judee.  The  Hebrew  mind,  with  its  cen- 
turies of  musing  on  things  seen  and  unseen,  really 
meditated  to  some  purpose. 

The  plain  truth  of  the  matter,  after  all,  seems 
not  hard  to  get  at.  The  difference  between  him 
and  us  is,  that  he  takes  his  philosophy  the  other 
way  round,  beginning  where  we  leave  off.  Ours, 
like  our  planet,  is  a  condensation  —  we  may  per- 
haps say  also  a  cooling  —  from  nebula  to  orbic 
form ;  it  comes,  as  the  nursery  poem  phrases  it, 
"out  of  the  everywhere  into  the  here,"  gathering 

23 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

the  scattered  elements  into  slow,  patient  system; 
and  the  last  term  of  its  series,  arrived  at  by  much 
head-breaking  contemplation,  and  still  somewhat 
in  abeyance,  is  God.  With  the  Hebrew,  God  is 
the  first  term,  the  unquestioned  postulate;  and  in 
the  encompassing  sense  of  his  being  and  will  the 
Hebrew  thinker  went  forth  into  the  welter  of 
the  world,  or  rather  into  the  turmoil  of  human  life 
and  personality,  to  re-create  manhood  in  God's 
image.  Thus  his  effort  was  not  to  condense  the 
clouds  of  speculation  into  a  ball,  but  rather  to 
pierce  them  through  and  through  with  light  from 
beyond.1 

Meanwhile,  it  satisfies  our  present  purpose  to 
note  that  the  Hebrew  sage  was  working  in  the 
other  section  of  the  world  orbit;  in  the  practical 
rather  than  the  speculative,  in  an  applied  system 
rather  than  a  theorized.  His  procedure,  in  fact, 
was  more  like  our  modern  inductive  science  than 
like  philosophy;  his  obstinate  requiring  of  a  sign 
to  authenticate  his  progress  was  essentially  the 
same  as  our  reliance  on  observation  and  experi- 
ment to  make  sure  we  are  right  as  far  as  we  go. 
His  distinctive  strain  is  not  unfitly  indicated  in  the 
very  name  he  so  confidently  gave  to  his  system: 
it  is  Wisdom,  the  real  article,  the  idea  actually  at 

1  Davidson,  Biblical  and  Literary  Essays,  pp.  29  sqq. 
24 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

work,  rather  than  Philosophy,  the  love  of  wisdom, 
the  search  after  a  thing  yet  problematic  and 
inchoate. 

But  that  it  has,  therefore,  not  a  real  philoso- 
phic tissue  and  basis  ?  Well,  that  remains  to  be 
seen.  There  is  one  thing,  at  the  outset,  to  put  to 
the  credit  side  of  the  account;  and  let  it  stand  for 
what  it  is  worth.  It  is  what  I  have  already  men- 
tioned as  distinguishing  the  Wisdom  section  of  the 
Bible  from  the  rest.  The  sages  do  not  assume  to  get 
their  views  of  life  from  a  mount  of  revealed  vision, 
nor  demand  that  men  accept  their  word  because 
the  Lord  has  said  it.  They  go  out  with  the  eyes 
and  ears  and  common  sense  with  which  every 
man  is  endowed,  and  they  ask  men  to  heed  their 
word  because  it  is  self-evidencing  and  reasonable. 
For  the  rest,  the  fact  that  they  come  to  identify 
their  verdict  with  what  others  deem  revelation 
is  not  necessarily  against  either  its  validity  or 
its  philosophic  soundness.  It  simply  reaches  the 
same  conclusion  by  another  process,  at  once  more 
intuitive  and  more  experimental.1  It  deals  pre- 
dominantly with  the  spiritual  elements  of  human 
nature,  as  philosophy  does  with  the  intellectual; 
with  the  truths  that  never  can  be  proved,  that 

1  How  true  this  is  may  be  seen  by  comparing  the  course  and 
outcome  of  President  Hyde's  book,  From  Epicurus  to  Christ. 

25 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

need  not  be  proved,  because  they  are  there  in  plain 
sight,  and  they  themselves  prove.  These  elemental 
principles  do  not  look  so  scholarly,  and  thus  do  not 
afford  so  good  opportunity  for  those  who  exploit 
them  to  achieve  a  cheap  reputation  for  abysmal 
learning.  Hence,  they  may  be  deceiving  as  to 
depth.  But  if  we  take  adequate  heed  of  them,  we 
may  find  that  human  reason  and  religious  faith 
are  coordinate  means,  each  equally  valid  in  its 
sphere,  of  getting  at  the  truth  of  things;  may  find 
also  that  the  truth  after  which  both  are  searching 
is  at  bottom  one  and  indivisible. 

The  inquiry  how  far  we  also  may  put  faith  in 
the  sages'  verdict  on  life  is  in  truth  best  answered 
not  in  the  time-worn  philosophic  dialect,  but  in 
a  more  modern  approach.  Everything  is  nowa- 
days studied  historically,  genetically.  The  Hebrew 
Wisdom  too,  we  find,  was  a  thing  with  a  history: 
it  was  a  consecutive  growth,  an  evolution.  It 
began  rudimentally,  with  the  salient  facts  and 
values  of  life,  the  things  that  every  mind  can  appre- 
hend and  every  calloused  hand  work  with.  It  en- 
tered the  field  of  common  human  affairs:  noting 
the  lines  of  industry  and  intercourse,  the  ground- 
work of  habits  and  tendencies,  customs  and  man- 
ners and  speech,  the  ever-invading  perversity  of 
the  undisciplined  heart,  the  inexorable  marriage 

26 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

of  act  and  consequence.  It  gradually  evolved  a 
great  central  law  of  wise  conduct,  with  its  sanc- 
tions of  reward  and  penalty;  which  law  had  then, 
as  time  went  on,  to  meet  successive  onsets  of 
testing,  verification,  broadening,  deepening,  until 
its  validity  was  thoroughly  established.  The  idea 
that  there  was  such  a  law  and  manhood  order  it 
had  taken  for  granted  in  the  first  place;  Moses 
had  begun  the  ingraining  of  that.  But  this  it 
had  exploited  on  its  own  account  and  in  its  own 
idiom ;  .  and  from  a  ceremonial  and  national  law 
had  expanded  it  gradually  to  a  universally  human 
and  even  cosmic  reference;  so  that  before  we  leave 
the  contemplation  of  the  seasoned  body  of  Wis- 
dom, there  looms  up  behind  it  the  background  of 
a  world,  a  universe,  a  solemn  and  unitary  abyss  of 
being.  All  this  looks  to  me  like  the  evolution  not 
of  a  minutely  reasoned,  but  of  a  deeply  lived  and 
realized  philosophy.  It  is,  in  sum,  a  vital  chapter 
in  the  large  evolution  of  personality. 

Now  this,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  a  philosophy  of 
just  that  kind  which  our  modern  scientific  mind  is 
even  now  engaged  in  building;  somewhat  timidly, 
indeed,  and  cautiously  terming  it  metaphysical 
evolution;  but  surely  sweeping  into  it  as  by  a  fate. 
It  is  a  philosophy  founded  not  on  a  priori  assump- 
tions, but  on  fact  and  a  reign  of  law;  working  in  the 

27 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

sphere  of  the  higher  biology,  and  sturdily  treading 
in  its  eternal  principles  at  every  step  of  advance. 
Crude  and  fragmentary  this  Wisdom  chapter  is,  to 
be  sure,  and  needing  translation  into  terms  and  con- 
cepts of  to-day.  I  would  not  claim  too  much  for 
it.  But  from  the  light  in  which  I  have  come  to  view 
it,  I  deem  that  we  have  rather  been  inclined  to 
claim  too  little.  The  Jews  indeed  require  a  sign; 
they  demand  some  authentic  speaking  fact  from 
the  mystery  that  encompasses  us.  But  so,  for  that 
matter,  does  science;  and  the  supreme  sign  which 
the  Hebrew  Wisdom  was  set  to  discover  was,  like 
that  which  gleams  before  our  evolutionary  think- 
ers, the  unending  miracle  of  manhood  being. 

IV 

But  we  have  only  half  done  with  the  descrip- 
tion of  Hebrew  Wisdom  when  we  have  made  it 
out  to  be  a  veritable  philosophy.  The  half  that  is 
above  ground,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  is  yet  to  be 
noted.  To  that  solid  core  of  philosophic  thinking 
and  judicial  poise  Wisdom  adds  the  dynamic  of  lit- 
erary power.  It  survives  to  us,  as  it  found  way  to 
its  first  lay  readers,  not  only  on  account  of  its  sub- 
stance, but  by  the  verve  and  vitality  of  its  form. 
This  quality  it  doubtless  is,  in  great  part,  which  has 
dazzled  pedantic  eyes,  like  Professor  Siegfried's, 

28 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

into  denying  its  essential  philosophic  strain. 1  "  Nor 
is  the  form  of  the  Hokbma,"  he  says,  "that  of 
the  school  speech;  it  is  popular/'  This  is  the  aca- 
demic way  of  saying  it  is  literary.  A  literature, 
and  in  the  literary  key,  the  appeal  of  Wisdom  is 
to  man  as  man,  not  to  man  as  learned  and  tech- 
nical, or  to  man  as  merely  embodied  intellect  and 
reason.  It  gets  at  man's  thought  by  way  of  his  life 
and  will;  in  other  words,  its  idiom  is  that  of  the 
spirit.  Literature  I  define  broadly  as  that  fulness 
of  utterance  wherein  the  whole  man  comes  to 
expression;  as  the  central  spirit  of  man  translated 
into  word  and  image.  Some,  and  especially  book- 
dried  scholars,  are  suspicious  of  this  sort  of  thing. 
They  say  that  when  you  become  emotional  it  warps 
your  view  of  things,  or  when  you  give  play  to  your 
imagination  you  emasculate  your  thought,  cannot 
numerate  it  I,  2,  and  3,  small  a  and  b.  They  want 
every  utterance  cold,  literal,  logical,  dispassion- 
ate; they  would  put  their  literature  into  the  cate- 
gory somewhere  described  in  scripture  as  "things 
without  life  giving  sound."  Not  so  this  Wisdom; 
not  so  at  all.  It  tingles  in  every  part  with  the  sense 
of  life;  life  intense  in  expression  according  to  the 
issue  with  which  it  deals.  Heart  and  head  are  alike 

1  See  footnote,  p.  18  above.    The  sentence  here  quoted  follows 
immediately  on  what  is  given  there. 

29 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

enlisted;  intellect  and  emotion,  imagination  and 
impulse,  are  quickened  and  nourished;  as  the  man 
is  fired  with  the  splendor  or  momentousness  of  his 
cause,  so  he  speaks.  So  his  word  rises  on  fit  occa- 
sion to  heights  of  passion  or  invective;  it  burgeons 
into  visions  of  beauty  and  sublimity;  it  melts  into 
moving  accents  of  sympathy  and  tenderness.  If  a 
Job  is  stung  by  the  apparent  injustice  of  his  hear- 
say God,  his  words  flow  in  a  molten  stream  of 
indignant  remonstrance.  If  an  Ecclesiastes  feels 
the  cramping  effect  of  this  vain  prison-house  exist- 
ence, the  sombre  tone  and  coloring  of  his  speech 
is  the  frank  portrayal  of  it.  If  the  Proverb  writer 
is  enraptured  by  the  beauty  and  majesty  of  Our 
Lady  Wisdom,  or  charmed  by  the  sweet  domestic 
grace  and  good  sense  of  the  Virtuous  Woman,  there 
is  a  rhythm  and  richness  of  style  to  correspond. 
It  pictures,  not  argues;  it  is  too  passionate  to 
be  stiff  and  precise.  Popular  ?  nay,  this  is  too 
light  a  word;  the  utterance  of  Wisdom  takes  its 
peculiar  literary  texture  from  being  the  utter- 
ance of  the  whole  man. 

All  this  is  little  suggestive  of  what  our  imagina- 
tion calls  up  when  the  name  philosophy  is  pro- 
nounced. We  think  of  philosophy  as  something 
severe  and  academic:  as  profound  learning,  head- 
breaking  thought,  the  secretion  of  pure  brain.  To 

30 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

read  it  we  must  literally  work  our  passage;  and  if 
our  lives  are  kindled  by  it,  we  have  to  supply  the 
fire,  meeting  the  philosopher  more  than  halfway. 
Its  appeal  is  only  to  a  part  of  us,  only  to  the  intel- 
lect; and  all  the  literary  fervors  and  beauties  that 
set  us  in  a  glow  of  delight  or  quicken  our  emo- 
tional and  active  nature  are  so  much  surplusage, 
which  to  the  cold  heart  of  the  pedant  amounts  to 
so  much  defect.  This  fact  is  to  be  reckoned  with 
for  what  it  is  worth  in  holding  up  Wisdom  by  the 
side  of  philosophy.  Wisdom,  being  first  of  all  a 
literature,  has  the  universal  appeal  of  literature. 
It  exists  for  men  who  feel  and  act  as  well  as  for 
men  who  study  and  contemplate.  If  philosophy, 
it  is  philosophy  inwoven  with  the  palpitating  issues 
of  life.  It  is  not  academic,  a  luxury  for  scholars; 
not  esoteric,  a  thing  for  favored  initiates  to  gloat 
over;  not  concerned  to  look  or  sound  scholarly,  or 
to  guard  its  secret  profundities.  Rather,  it  aims 
to  be  an  all  men's  utterance,  which  every  lowliest 
one  hearing  may  understand.  Let  us  not  think, 
then,  that  this  literary  quality  gives  us  less  or  less 
conclusive  truth.  Rather  it  gives  us  as  much  more 
as  the  whole  man  is  more  than  a  part,  and  as  man- 
kind is  more  than  a  favored  class.  To  every  man 
in  whom  the  spirit  of  manhood  dwells,  it  opens 
his  native  rights  in  life. 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 


It  is  time  now  to  inquire  a  little  more  closely 
how  this  strain  of  literature  took  its  rise  in  the 
Hebrew  nation,  and  what  initial  stamp  the  sages 
gave  to  it.  A  literature  so  eminently  a  folk's  litera- 
ture, is  it  not  natural  to  look  for  its  source  and 
spring  somewhere  in  the  folk's  heart  and  life  ? 

Well,  as  we  note  the  rather  fragmentary  scraps 
of  utterance  embedded  in  the  early  Hebrew  his- 
tory, we  come,  away  back  in  the  record  of  the 
Judges,  upon  a  very  interesting  illustration  of  how 
the  common  folk  —  by  which  term  I  mean  the 
people  separated  for  the  moment  from  the  care  of 
seers  and  priests  —  used  to  amuse  themselves  in 
a  quasi-literary  way.  For  the  light  it  throws  on 
racial  bent  and  characteristics,  it  is  to  my  mind 
a  discovery  almost  as  notable  as  Bishop  Percy's 
discovery  of  the  ballad  poetry  of  the  English  unlet- 
tered classes.  Every  nation  according  to  its  native 
genius.  In  the  present  case  —  I  am  referring  to 
Samson's  riddle  —  we  come  upon  a  folk's  bent, 
not  as  among  the  English,  for  fighting  and  the 
chase  and  romantic  love,  not  as  among  Oriental 
nations,  for  genies  and  treasure-trove  and  magical 
exploits;  but  for  an  untying  of  intellectual  and 
verbal  knots,  for  an  exercise  of  wits.  The  young 

32 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

athlete  Samson,  it  appears,  on  his  way  to  woo  a 
woman  of  the  Philistines,  had  killed  a  young  lion 
that  roared  against  him;  and  some  time  later,  on 
his  way  to  the  wedding,  had  found  a  swarm  of  bees 
and  honey  in  the  lion's  carcass.  So  when  the 
diversions  of  the  wedding  feast  were  in  progress, 
Samson  gave  his  riddle  to  the  Philistines  to  guess. 

"Out  of  the  eater  came  forth  meat; 
And  out  of  the  strong  came  forth  sweetness."  l 

This  does  very  well  for  a  muscular  giant's  first 
incursion  into  literary  expression;  but  it  can  hardly 
be  called  a  fair  riddle,  because  to  guess  it  one  must 
know  not  a  common  principle,  but  an  exceptional 
event,  a  freak  fact.  No  wonder  that,  as  Samson 
expressed  it,  the  answer,  by  the  device  of  "  plough- 
ing with  his  heifer,"  had  to  come  eventually  from 
the  propounder  himself.  Too  evidently  Samson 
was  no  sage;  and  his  famous  riddle  did  not  embody 
any  wisdom  at  all,  but  only  a  puzzle  which  one 
man  alone  had  the  combination  for  unlocking. 

Far  wiser,  in  fact,  and  containing  a  really 
exquisite  moral  lesson,  was  Jotham's  earlier 
parable,  or  apologue,  of  the  fruit  trees  and  the 
bramble.2  Even  this  latter  example,  however,  I 
do  not  adduce  as  a  pioneer  specimen  of  what  we 
understand  by  Wisdom  literature.  What  I  would 

1  Judges  xiv,  14.  *  Judges  ix,  8-15. 

33 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

have  you  note  is,  that  in  the  form  of  Samson's 
riddle,  with  its  epigrammatic  thought-provoking 
phrase,  and  still  more  truly  in  Jotham's  parable, 
with  its  easy  employment  of  analogy  and  simili- 
tude, we  have  disclosed  to  us,  through  these  casual 
folk  utterances  of  early  history,  the  characteristic 
mould,  the  phrasal  matrix,  in  which  the  pronounce- 
ments of  Wisdom  were  cast.  We  shall  see  what 
the  sages  made  of  it  later.  Here  at  the  outset  it 
is  of  interest  to  note  that  it  is  a  form  not  exotic 
nor  artificial,  but  one  that  rises  spontaneously  out 
of  the  native  genius,  the  thought  attitude,  of  the 
common  people.  When  some  local  event  caused 
an  unknown  person,  like  a  ballad-maker,  to  drop 
into  literature,  authors  of  that  class  were  referred 
to  as  "they  that  speak  in  proverbs."1 

Two  or  three  other  examples,  occurring  in  the 
reign  of  King  David,  seem  to  put  us  in  touch  with 
Wisdom  utterance  in  the  early  making.  The  first 
wise  man  mentioned  in  the  Bible  —  if  you  will 
pardon  the  Hibernicism  —  was  a  woman.  She  was 
brought  by  Joab  from  Tekoah,  to  tell  and  enact 
Joab's  parable  to  the  king,  and  so  elicit  from  him 
a  judgment  which  would  enable  him,  with  a  good 
face,  to  restore  Absalom  to  favor.2  Another  wise 
woman,  encountering  Joab  in  his  siege  of  Abel, 

1  Numbers  xxi,  27.  2  2  Samuel  xiv,  2-20. 

34 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

saved  the  city  by  her  wisdom,  much  as  the  poor 
wise  man  did  in  Ecclesiastes'  story.1  King  David, 
-it  would  seem,  though  not  an  originator  of  wis- 
dom like  his  brilliant  son,  had  a  heart  tenderly 
open  to  the  wisdom  of  others;  for  besides  his  recep- 
tion of  the  wise  woman's  parable,  just  mentioned, 
you  remember  how  nobly  he  responded  to  the 
searching  parable  of  Nathan  the  prophet.2  And 
both  these  cases  show  a  shrewd  device  of  the  early 
folk's  wisdom :  the  device  of  constructing  a  paral- 
lel case,  or  analogy,  and  getting  the  hearer  to  make 
the  application  himself.  The  spice  of  latent  humor 
in  it  reminds  us  oddly  of  the  sly  remark  of  one  of 
Dickens's  characters,  "The  bearin's  of  this  obser- 
vation lies  in  the  application  on  't."  As  a  serious 
proposition,  it  was  something  like  what  we  call 
parity  of  reasoning,  except  that  it  took  the  seduc- 
tive form  of  story  rather  than  the  framework  of 
logic.  It  was  a  form  of  counsel,  or  reproof,  that 
could  not  be  gainsaid.3 

1  2  Samuel  xx,  16-22;  Eccl.  ix,  14-16.  z  2  Samuel  xii,  1-14. 

3  The  following  examples  of  scattered  sayings  outside  of  the  Wis- 
dom books  bear  the  mark  of  folk  proverbs,  racy  rather  than  artistic. 
Judges  viii,  21 :  "  As  the  man  is,  so  is  his  strength;  "  i  Samuel  xxiv, 
13:  "Wickedness  proceedeth  from  the  wicked;  "  Jeremiah  xxxi,  29, 
Ezekiel  xviii,  2:  "The  fathers  have  eaten  sour  grapes,  and  the  chil- 
dren's teeth  are  set  on  edge; "  Ezekiel  xii,  22:  "  The  days  are  pro- 
longed, and  every  vision  faileth;"  amended  in  the  next  verse  to, 
"The  days  are  at  hand,  and  the  effect  of  every  vision;"  Ezekiel 
xvi,  44:  "As  is  the  mother,  so  is  her  daughter." 

35 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

The  literary  form  and  vehicle  of  Wisdom,  how- 
ever, must  be  left  to  a  chapter  by  itself.  For  its 
distinctive  grounding,  we  do  well,  I  think,  to  heed 
the  tradition  which  traces  the  Wisdom  literature, 
as  an  organized  species  of  authorship,  to  the  time 
and  atmosphere  of  King  Solomon.  Tradition  has 
done  much  to  disguise  Solomon  in  a  haze  of  magic 
and  glamour.  The  name  Solomon,  too,  became 
a  convenience  as  a  literary  label  for  a  distinctive 
strain  of  authorship;  just  as  the  name  of  Moses 
was  used  to  designate  the  body  of  Hebrew  legis- 
lation, from  early  to  late,  and  as  the  name  of  David 
gave  distinction  to  the  body  of  Hebrew  psalmody. 
But  where  there  is  so  much  smoke,  it  would  seem, 
there  must  be  some  fire.  Apart  from  this  conven- 
tionalism and  glamour,  apart  also  from  the  mere 
tradition  of  his  cleverness,  there  must  have  been  a 
self-justifying  reason  for  naming  a  body  of  litera- 
ture after  Solomon  rather  than  after,  say,  Professor 
Cheyne's  pet,  Jerahmeel. 

And  I  think  the  reason  is  not  hard  to  deduce 
from  historic  conditions.  Not  that  King  Solomon 
must  needs  have  functioned  as  a  royal  sage;  or  at 
least  as  the  spectacular  sage,  with  his  patriarchal 
air  of  vast  experience,  or  his  oracular  mien  of 
"wisdom,  gravity,  profound  conceit."  If  he  did, 
it  was  more  theatrical  than  real;  for  his  reign 

36 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

had  too  much  of  short-sighted  administration,  Ori- 
ental self-indulgence,  not  to  say  of  sheer  heathen 
folly,  to  be  a  sage's  reign.  But  his  court  seems  to 
have  been  pervaded  by  an  atmosphere  in  which 
the  newly  awakened  thoughts  of  men  throve  and 
blossomed;  and  he  himself  was  so  responsive  to 
the  influence,  so  alert  to  explore  new  regions  of 
knowledge  and  annex  larger  areas  of  thought,  that 
his  enthusiastic  historian  says  God  gave  him 
"wisdom  and  understanding  exceeding  much,  and 
largeness  of  heart,  even  as  the  sand  that  is  on  the 
sea-shore."  l  This  is  the  picture  not  so  much  of 
a  deeply  contemplative  or  philosophical  monarch 
as  of  a  keen,  broadly  tolerant,  versatile  one.  It  is, 
in  short,  the  likeness  of  the  kingly  patron,  awak- 
ening and  encouraging  the  activities  of  his  sub- 
jects, rather  than  of  the  cloistered  investigator, 
buried  in  his  books  or  his  laboratory. 

With  this  idea  of  him  all  the  accounts  of  his 
reign,  a  reign  comparable  in  some  ways  to  the 
"spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth,"  not  unfairly 
agree.  We  do  not  get  all  of  Solomon  in  his  grand 
enterprise  of  building  that  appendage  to  his  palace 
called  the  Temple;  we  do  not  get  therein  what  he 
had  most  at  heart.  He  was  more  a  man  of  the 
world  than  of  religion.  He  it  was  who  first,  among 

1  i  Kings  iv,  29. 

37 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

the  Hebrews,  felt  the  touch  of  an  interest  and 
sympathy  greater  than  tribal  and  national.  True, 
his  interest  outside  of  Palestine,  genuinely  He- 
brew, was  largely  that  of  the  trader  and  collector; 
but  that  was  something,  and  that  fact  may  have 
had  its  part  in  determining  the  thrifty  business 
tone  of  Solomonic  Wisdom.  And  the  thing  hap- 
pened that  always  happens:  larger  commercial 
intercourse  brought  larger  appreciations,  and  out 
of  these  was  soon  coined  wisdom.  You  remember 
how  penetratively  Ruskin  catches  the  essentially 
commercial  spirit  of  the  early  Wisdom  utterance. 
"  Some  centuries,"  he  says,  "  before  the  Christian 
era,  a  Jew  merchant,  largely  engaged  in  business 
on  the  Gold  Coast,  and  reported  to  have  made  one 
of  the  largest  fortunes  of  his  time  (held  also  in 
repute  for  much  practical  sagacity),  left  among  his 
ledgers  some  general  maxims  concerning  wealth, 
which  have  been  preserved,  strangely  enough, 
even  to  our  own  days."  * 

Though  of  course  we  must  trace  differently  the 
origin  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  which  is  here 
referred  to,  we  do  not  amiss  to  preserve  for  future 
notice  the  business  tone  here  assumed  for  Solo- 
mon, the  note  of  thrift  and  management  and  suc- 
cess, which  must  be  recognized  by  the  side  of  the 

1  Ruskin,  Unto  this  Last,  Essay  iii. 
38 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

religious  strain,  when  we  come  to  analyze  the  tissue 
of  Wisdom.  As  we  shall  see,  the  business  spirit 
of  the  Wisdom  literature,  deriving  its  tone  perhaps 
from  the  era  of  this  first  Hebrew  trader  and 
importer,  was  not  only  its  source  of  strength, 
sanity,  character;  this  very  spirit  also,  more  than 
anything  else,  was  its  storm-centre,  where  were 
brewed  the  attacks,  the  remonstrances,  the  re- 
forms, which  from  time  to  time  Wisdom  had  to 
encounter. 

Now  how  shall  we  image  to  ourselves  King 
Solomon's  relation  to  the  Wisdom  culture  of  his 
time  ?  There  are  several  royal  personages  of  Eng- 
lish history  with  whom  it  may  be  suggestive  to 
compare  him.  Shall  it  be,  then,  King  Alfred  the 
Great,  who,  having  by  hard  struggle  delivered  his 
people  from  a  foreign  foe,  yearned  to  help  their 
minds  also,  and  in  person  translated  into  their 
rugged  vernacular  Boethius  and  Orosius  and 
St.  Gregory  and  the  Venerable  Bede,  in  order  that 
his  beloved  nation  might  have  ideas  to  live  by  ? 
There  is  a  note  of  magnanimity  and  self-forgetting 
toil  here,  which  we  miss  in  the  too  luxurious  king 
of  Israel.  Well,  then,  shall  it  be  Queen  Elizabeth  ? 
whose  court  was  a  hive  of  wits  and  sonneteers; 
who  herself,  an  accomplished  scholar,  "could  talk 
poetry  with  Spenser  and  philosophy  with  Bruno; 

39 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

.  .  .  could  discuss  Euphuism  with  Lyly,  and 
enjoy  the  chivalry  of  Essex;  .  .  .  could  turn  from 
talk  of  the  last  fashions  to  pore  with  Cecil  over 
despatches  and  treasury  books;  .  .  .  could  pass 
from  tracking  traitors  with  Walsingham  to  settle 
points  of  doctrine  with  Parker,  or  to  calculate 
with  Frobisher  the  chances  of  a  north-west  pas- 
sage to  the  Indies."  1  But  here  we  miss  the  single- 
mindedness,  the  keenly  earnest  mood,  and  prob- 
ably the  personal  skill  of  authorship,  which  we 
reasonably  attribute  to  the  Hebrew  monarch.  We 
come  nearer  to  our  parallel,  I  think,  surprising 
as  it  may  appear,  in  King  James  the  First,  that 
gabbling  undignified  king  who,  though  a  ripe 
scholar,  full  of  shrewdness  and  mother-wit,  and 
though  "a  voluminous  author  on  subjects  which 
ranged  from  predestination  to  tobacco,"  yet  bal- 
anced up  so  ill  on  the  practical  side  that  he  was 
dubbed  "the  wisest  fool  in  Christendom."  2  Only 
a  little  further  propagation  of  the  same  discordant 
traits  was  needed  to  make  up  the  character  of  his 
grandson,  Charles  the  Second,  who  "  never  said  a 
foolish  thing,  and  never  did  a  wise  one." 

Of  course  I  would  not  think  of  making  this 
parallel  go  on  all  fours;  and  undoubtedly,  as  King 

1  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  vol.  ii,  p.  318. 
J  Green,  A  Short  History  of  the  English  Peopk,  chap,  viii,  sec- 
tion 2. 

4° 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

Solomon  was  not  a  wise  fool,  but  (at  least  in  his 
doting  old  age)  a  very  foolish  wise  man,  he  was 
incomparably  the  greater  personage.  But  there  is 
something  in  the  way  he  descended  into  the  arena 
of  learning  himself,  and  wrought  by  the  side  of  his 
sages  to  give  tone  and  character  to  their  work, 
even  surpassing  them  in  their  own  sphere  of  skill, 
which  makes  us  think  of  these  two  monarchs,  Solo- 
mon and  James  the  First,  together.  Solomon's 
impact  on  the  culture  of  Wisdom  was  doubtless 
much  more  direct  and  personal  than  any  patronage 
or  encouragement  bestowed  by  the  English  king; 
an  impact  so  substantial  that  from  the  Proverbs 
of  Solomon,  the  composition  of  which  may  have 
begun  soon  after  his  time,  to  the  Wisdom  of 
Solomon,  written  less  than  two  centuries  before 
Christ,  a  long  line  of  literary  activity  traces  its 
paternity  to  him.  But  so  also,  by  a  striking  coin- 
cidence, just  three  centuries  since  the  modern 
ruler  was  called  from  Scotland  to  the  English 
throne,1  we  are  still  calling  the  book  which  we 
revere  the  most,  and  in  which  we  read  the  purest 
English  in  the  world,  King  James's  Version. 

Here,  then,  I  think,  is  a  reasonable  way  of  mak- 
ing plain  to  our  imagination  the  beginnings  of  the 
culture  of  Wisdom.  In  the  spacious  times  of  King 

1  This  was  written  in  1904. 
41 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

Solomon,  when  in  an  era  of  settledness  and  pros- 
perity the  Hebrew  nation  was  awake  as  never 
before  to  the  things  of  the  mind,  there  came  to 
recognition  a  class  of  men  whose  self-appointed 
occupation  was  to  explore  the  marvellous  new 
world  opening  to  them,  and  to  coordinate  its  vis- 
ible facts  with  inner  principles.  The  names  of 
some  of  the  men  who  thus  became  noted  have 
come  down  to  us;  set  by  the  side  of  the  king's 
name,  to  be  sure,  and  to  the  greater  glory  of  the 
latter,  but  with  a  relative  distinction  of  their  own. 
"For  he  was  wiser  than  all  men;  than  Ethan  the 
Ezrahite,  and  Heman,  and  Chalcol,  and  Darda, 
the  sons  of  Mahol;  and  his  fame  was  in  all  na- 
tions round  about."  1  This  reads  as  if  King  Solo- 
mon had  associated  himself  with  the  inquiring, 
aggressive,  intellectual  spirits  of  his  time  because 
he  had  a  bent  that  way,  just  as  King  James 
the  First  had  a  bent  to  theology;  and  as  if  his 
royal  comradeship  and  patronage  had  brought 
into  existence  an  order  or  guild  of  wise  men,  a 
kind  of  university,  for  research  into  the  truths  of 
life  and  for  putting  the  results  on  record. 

The  guild  thus  originated  had  from  the  outset 
an  immense  advantage.  It  was  a  court  institution, 
and  its  manner  of  composition,  or  utterance,  as  it 

1  i  Kings  iv,  31. 
42 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

was  the  chosen  culture  of  kings,  had  the  eclat,  the 
distinction,  of  being  fashionable,  and  of  being  in 
the  hands  of  accredited  men  of  letters.  This  gave 
it  authority  and  national  repute.  Soon  other 
nations  caught  the  infection,  and  responded  to 
the  revival  of  learning  in  Judea.  The  Queen  of 
Sheba  came  from  afar  to  learn  more  about  it. 
Thus  the  university  of  Jerusalem,  as  we  may  call 
it,  began  its  career  under  most  favorable  and 
inspiring  auspices,  and  its  output  of  Wisdom 
gained  attention  at  once. 

That  this  order  of  court  sages  continued  its 
activity  long  beyond  the  reign  of  King  Solomon, 
composing  and  compiling  utterances  of  Wisdom 
and  putting  upon  them  the  Solomonic  hall-mark, 
like  a  kind  of  royal  imprimatur,  seems  evident  from 
that  striking  verse  at  the  head  of  the  twenty-fifth 
chapter  of  Proverbs:  "These  are  also  proverbs  of 
Solomon,  which  the  men  of  Hezekiah  king  of 
Judah  copied  out."  This  reads  as  if  the  "men 
of  Hezekiah"  were  merely  scribes,  whose  business 
it  was  to  call  in  from  the  past,  and  perhaps  from 
its  precarious  currency  among  the  people,  what 
the  world  would  not  willingly  let  die.  I  am  dis- 
posed to  think,  however,  that  their  occupation  was 
more  creative  than  this;  that  it  was  more  like 
George  Herbert's  ideal  of  the  studious  man,  to 

43 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

"copy  fair  what  time  hath  blurr'd."  At  any 
rate,  the  fact  remains  significant  that  there  were 
"men  of  Hezekiah"  at  all,  engaged  after  so  many 
years  in  the  patient  dissemination  of  Wisdom; 
even  though  the  enthusiasm  of  the  initial  impulse, 
or  of  originative  composition,  may  have  passed. 

Further,  it  would  seem  that  this  guild  of  sages, 
unlike  the  orders  of  prophets  and  priests,  became, 
and  perhaps  was  from  the  beginning,  a  kind  of 
international  institution,  a  literary  court  or  clear- 
ing-house, in  which  all  thinkers,  of  whatever 
religion  or  nation,  could  meet  on  common  ground 
and  see  eye  to  eye.  Solomon's  "largeness  of  heart" 
itself  would  contribute  to  this  character  of  it;  and 
perhaps,  indeed,  as  in  building  his  temple  so  in 
founding  his  university,  he  was  borrowing  his  idea 
from  other  nations.  When  his  wisdom  is  estimated, 
it  already  seems  to  have  established  cults  to  com- 
pare with:  it  "excelled  the  wisdom  of  all  the  chil- 
dren of  the  east  country,  and  all  the  wisdom  of 
Egypt." 1  Here  is  an  element  of  distinction  which 
we  surely  must  not  neglect  in  our  large  assessment 
of  the  Wisdom  literature.  The  prophets  were  in- 
tensely national;  their  supreme  concern  being  to 
wean  their  people  from  the  degrading  idolatries 
of  other  nations,  or  from  entangling  alliances  with 

1  i  Kings  iv,  30. 

44 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

them;  or  in  later  days,  to  make  their  own  nation 
so  comely  on  its  own  peculiar  lines  that  other 
nations  would  flock  to  conform  with  its  ideals  like 
doves  to  their  windows.  The  priests,  in  like  man- 
ner, were  jealously  rigid  to  preserve  the  law  and 
ritual  of  their  national  God,  Jehovah.  Never  could 
they  consent  to  stray  beyond  that  narrow  enclo- 
sure. In  the  thought  of  the  Wisdom  books,  how- 
ever, we  are  moving  in  a  more  liberal  atmosphere. 
It  is  calculated  not  for  the  Jew  exclusively,  nor  for 
national  issues,  but  for  man  as  man,  and  as  indi- 
vidual man.  It  is  brought  home  not  to  the  nation 
as  such,  nor  is  it  concerned  with  a  particular 
scheme  of  theology  or  ceremonial  or  statesmanship. 
It  is  addressed  to  the  individual  as  an  integral 

O 

member  of  any  and  every  body  politic;  and  its 
religion  is  of  a  kind  deeper  than  forms  of  worship. 
All  this  betokens  a  kind  of  thinking  on  which 
different  nations  could  stand  together,  seeking  a 
solution  of  life  in  which  all  could  share. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  this  quality  of  Wisdom 
is  the  fact  that  in  the  later  Wisdom  books,  Job  and 
Ecclesiastes,  the  name  Jehovah  is  sparingly  used; 1 
the  name  Elohim  or  Eloah,  which  can  designate 
any  nation's  deity,  being  the  term  that  is  employed 
as  meaning  the  same  to  all.  In  Job,  too,  the  sacri- 

1  Cf.  e.  g.  Epic  of  the  Inner  Lije,  p.  202,  note  1.  20. 

45 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

fice  that  is  described,  when  Job  worships  in  behalf 
of  his  sons,  is  of  the  primitive  patriarchal  kind, 
such  as  Noah  offered  before  national  altars  were 
erected.  Another  fact,  too,  must  not  miss  notice. 
The  friends  of  Job,  typical  sages  and  men  of 
philosophical  authority,  all  come  from  lands  for- 
eign to  Judaism:  Eliphaz,  their  senior  and  leader, 
being  from  Teman  in  the  land -of  Edom,  a  place 
so  mentioned  in  connection  with  its  wisdom  1  that 
we  may  regard  him  as  the  representative  of  the  uni- 
versity of  Teman.  Job  himself  was  not  a  resident 
of  Judea  nor  of  Palestine,  but  of  Uz,  on  the  edge 
of  the  great  plains  eastward  of  that  country.  So  we 
see  how  the  order  of  sages,  with  their  common  range 
of  inquiry,  and  their  free  interchange  of  views,  set 
up  a  kind  of  clearing-house  of  ideas  for  all  the  lands. 
When  we  come  to  examine  the  substance  of  their 
doctrine,  we  see  that  the  ideas  themselves  have  the 
same  cosmopolitan  or  rather  universal  character. 
We  find  in  it  something  analogous  to  that  univer- 
sal language  of  music;  wherein  the  German  Bach 
and  the  Austrian  Mozart  and  the  Italian  Verdi 
and  the  Hungarian  Dvorak  and  the  Pole  Tschai- 
kowsky  and  the  Jew  Mendelssohn  all  speak  to  us 
in  an  elemental  language  both  theirs  and  ours, 
which  to  a  musical  nature  needs  no  translation. 

1  Sec,  for  instance,  Jeremiah  xlix,  7. 
46 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

Of  the  personnel  of  the  sages,  not  much  re- 
mains to  be  said.  There  is  a  dash  and  brilliancy 
about  King  Solomon's  exploits  in  judgment  and 
shrewdness  which  suggests  that  in  its  beginnings 
the  literary  culture  of  Wisdom  may  have  been 
largely  in  the  hands  of  young  men,  the  natural 
mates  of  so  youthful  a  patron.  This,  however, 
was  not  quite  the  natural  fitness  of  things.  As  years 
go  on,  we  associate  the  cult  more  with  men  of 
age  and  experience;  so  that  in  place  of  the  wise, 
to  whom  Jeremiah  attributes  counsel,  Ezekiel 
gives  the  same  function  to  the  ancients.1  Youth, 
in  fact,  comes  to  be  quite  at  a  discount  in  con- 
nection with  Wisdom;  so  much  so  that  when 
Elihu,  in  the  Book  of  Job,  comes  in  to  give 
his  casting-vote  in  the  controversy  between  Job 
and  his  friends,  it  is  with  an  apology  for  his 
youth :  — 

"  Young  am  I  in  days,  and  ye  are  hoary; 
Wherefore  I  shrank  and  was  afraid 
To  utter  unto  you  what  I  know. 
I  said,  Days  should  speak, 
And  multitude  of  years  should  make  known  wisdom."  2 

Men  of  weight  and  experience,  of  seasoned  ob- 
servation and  ripe  reflection,  —  such,  ideally,  were 

1  Compare  Jeremiah  xviii,  18,  with  Ezekiel  vii,  26. 

2  Job  xxxii,  6,  7.    In  quoting  the  Book  of  Job  I  give  my  own  trans- 
lation, from  my  book  The  Epic  oj  the  Inner  Life. 

47 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

the  sages.  Nay,  the  element  of  old  age  comes  by 
and  by  to  think  almost  too  much  of  itself;  it 
becomes  intolerant  and  inaccessible  to  new  ideas, 
—  as  Eliphaz,  speaking  for  the  guild,  says  to 
Job:- 

"  What  knowest  thou  that  we  know  not? 
What  understandest  thou,  and  the  same  is  not  in  us? 
Yea,  the  grey-haired,  yea,  the  aged  man,  is  amongst  us, 
Fuller  of  days  than  thy  father."  1 

This  rigid  intolerance  has  indeed  to  be  checked, 
if  Wisdom  would  hold  itself  flexible  and  progres- 
sive, and  if  it  would  correct  its  errors.  So  Job,  in 
his  attack  on  its  hardened  orthodoxy,  has  to  ad- 
minister a  rebuke  to  its  assumptions:  — 

"Doth  wisdom  dwell  with  hoary  heads, 
And  is  length  of  days  understanding  ? "  2 

There  is,  however,  a  gracious  and  fatherly  side 
to  old  age,  which  is  much  more  in  evidence;  and 
in  general  it  is  much  safer  to  set  store  by  its  devel- 
oped conservatism  than  to  expose  Wisdom  to  the 
risks  and  rashness  of  youth.  And  so  we  may 
figure  to  ourselves  the  sages  as  men  who  by  time 
and  seasoned  contemplation,  as  also  by  much 
interchange  of  thought  among  themselves,  had 
earned  in  the  community  the  right  to  be  heard 
and  heeded.  Though  there  was  that  freemasonry 

1  Job  xv,  9,  10.  *  Job  xii,  12. 

48 


THE  WISDOM  FIELD,  AND  THE  SAGES 

of  ideas  between  them,  they  did  not  herd  together 
or  separate  themselves  from  the  world  of  affairs; 
their  lore  was  not  esoteric;  they  were 'to  be  found 
here  and  there,  in  the  places  of  concourse,  where 
truth  was  to  be  learned  and  where  counsel  was 
needed.  Job's  reminiscence  of  his  own  "autumn 
days"  gives  a  very  engaging  portrayal  of  the  typi- 
cal wise  counselor  and  friend,  as  he  makes  his 
wisdom  and  personality  felt :  — 

"When  I  went  forth  to  the  gate  by  the  city; 
When  I  fixed  my  seat  in  the  open  place  ; 
Young  men  saw  me,  and  withdrew  themselves, 
And  old  men  arose  and  stood  up; 
Princes  checked  their  words, 
And  laid  their  hand  upon  their  mouth; 
The  voice  of  nobles  was  hushed, 
And  their  tongue  cleaved  to  their  palate.  .  .  . 
Unto  me  they  gave  ear,  and  waited; 
And  they  were  silent,  listening  for  my  counsel. 
After  my  words  they  spake  not  again; 
For  upon  them  my  speech  descended  gently, 
And  they  waited  for  me  as  for  the  rain, 
And  opened  their  mouths  wide  as  for  the  latter  rain."  * 

Scarcely  less  attractive,  in  another  way,  is  the  pic- 
ture of  the  sage,  or  scribe,  who  reaches  people  by 
his  pen,  the  later  sage  Koheleth:  "And  further, 
since  Koheleth  was  wise,  he  still  taught  the  people 
knowledge;  and  he  composed,  and  compiled,  and 
arranged  many  lessons.  Koheleth  sought  to  find 

1  Job  xxix,  7-10,  21-23. 

49 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

words  of  pleasantness;  and  what  was  written  was 
upright,  words  of  truth."  1 

There  is  hope  for  a  people  that  has  such  counsel 
in  its  gates,  and  accords  it  honor  and  obedience. 

Thus,  from  a  few  obscure  and  scanty  hints  of 
history,  I  have  endeavored  to  reconstruct,  in  the 
light  of  to-day,  the  Hebrew  order  of  sages;  so  that 
we  might  image  to  ourselves  how  they  originated, 
and  what  place  they  filled  in  the  organism  of  the 
national  life.  They  were  men  of  the  people,  who 
knew  the  people  from  the  lowliest  up,  and  who 
had  the  good  of  every  class  at  heart;  who  knew 
each  other,  and  wrought  together  at  one  consistent 
vision  and  ideal  of  life,  which  in  a  way  better  than 
they  knew  shaped  itself  into  a  working  philosophy; 
who,  having  the  sunshine  of  royalty  to  favor  their 
beginnings,  stepped  providentially  into  a  position 
where  their  counsel  could  have  free  and  thankful 
course.  As  to  how  they  did  their  work,  and  what 
literary  vehicle  they  adopted,  we  have  not  obscure 
hints  but  a  group  of  undying  books  to  tell  us;  and 
the  strength  and  beauty  of  these  are  palpable, 
laying  hold  upon  all.  To  consider  this  literary 
vehicle,  its  principle,  its  inner  values,  its  develop- 
ment, shall  be  the  business  of  the  next  chapter. 

1  Ecclesiastes  xii,  9,  10.    My  quotations  from  Ecclesiastes  are  in 
my  own  translation,  from  my  book  Words  of  Koheleth. 

50 


II 

THE    LITERARY   VEHICLE 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  WISDOM  SHAPING  AN  ART 

I.  The  mashal :  the  phrasal  mould. 
II.  The  mashal :  the  inner  literary  value. 
III.  The  claim  of  connexion  and  continuity. 


II 

THE   LITERARY   VEHICLE 

OUR  main  interest,  in  the  chapters  that  fol- 
low, centres  in  what  the  Hebrew  sages 
themselves  had  most  at  heart,  the  essen- 
tial trend  and  truth  of  their  counsel,  or  what  we 
may  call  the  soul  of  Wisdom.  But  souls  have  bod- 
ies; and  it  is  through  contact  with  a  body,  through 
seeing  a  face,  hearing  a  voice,  grasping  a  hand, 
that  we  gain  access  to  the  inner  place  where  the 
soul  resides.  And  the  body  of  Wisdom,  that  which 
gives  it  shape  and  comeliness,  voice  and  power, 
is  its  literary  form.  This  distinctive  mould  and 
type  of  utterance  is  its  vehicle,  whereby  it  is  made 
portable  and  moving,  whereby  it  is  borne  strongly 
on,  through  its  various  phases  and  issues,  to  the 
summit  of  its  mission. 

In  spite  of  the  ocean  of  literature  in  which  to- 
day our  minds  swim  and  subsist,  people  have 
strangely  vague  ideas  of  the  literary  art  and  what 
it  means.  Especially  is  this  true  as  applied  to  the 
Bible.  Much  is  said  nowadays  about  studying 
the  Bible  as  literature;,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  which 
class  of  students  is  the  more  at  sea,  those  who 

53 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

know  a  great  deal  about  the  Bible  and  very  little 
about  literature,  or  those  who  know  a  great  deal 
about  literature  and  very  little  about  the  Bible. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  to  an  exceedingly  crude  and 
imperfect  degree  that  the  combination  has  hitherto 
been  made,  in  such  wise  as  to  identify  the  expres- 
sional  art  of  the  Bible  with  the  literary  values  that 
are  so  potent  to  move  us  in  our  daily  thinking. 
Why,  to  many  the  simple  fact  that  the  Bible  is 
a  real  book,  like  "Hamlet"  or  "In  Memoriam,"  is 
as  wonderful  a  discovery  as  was  that  of  M.  Jour- 
dam  in  Moliere's  play,  who,  beginning  his  educa- 
tion late,  found  to  his  exceeding  delight  and  pride 
that  he  had  actually  been  talking  prose  all  his  life. 
But  to  many,  too,  this  literary  approach  to  the 
Bible  seems  like  a  side  issue,  a  subsidiary  matter; 
pleasant  indeed  for  its  culture  interest,  and  well 
adapted  for  evening  talks  with  light  refresh- 
ments, but  remote  from  the  real  inwardness  of 
the  thing.  It  is  to  them  as  if,  instead  of  making 
our  exploration  of  the  Bible  culminate,  as  the 
revivalists  do,  in  making  labelled  heaps  of  all  th* 
"blesseds"  and  "whosoevers,"  or  as  the  theo- 
logians do,  in  squaring  everything  by  a  certain 
aspect  of  vicarious  atonement,  —  what  they  call 
"the  blood,"  —  we  should,  just  for  passing 
amusement,  note  what  it  says  about  flowers,  or 

54 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

seas  and  mountains,  or  the  moon.  But  so  to  think, 
whether  about  its  literary  or  its  essential  character, 
is  sadly  to  belittle  a  very  vital  and  commanding 
subject.  The  literary  approach  to  the  Bible  will 
not  bear  to  be  parcelled  out  so.  It  insists  on  tak- 
ing the  whole  subject,  theological,  practical,  and 
all,  into  its  jurisdiction.  The  large  truth  is  that, 
as  Stevenson  says,  "the  business  of  life  is  mainly 
carried  on  by  means  of  this  difficult  art  of  litera- 
ture, and  according  to  a  man's  proficiency  in  that 
art  shall  be  the  freedom  and  the  fulness  of  his 
intercourse  with  other  men."  l  This  applies  to 
the  Bible,  that  book  which  has  won  universal 
homage  as  an  archetypal  literature,  not  less  than 
to  other  books,  but  more.  The  freedom  and  ful- 
ness of  its  intercourse  with  men,  too,  are  due  to  its 
literary  power:  not  only  to  its  high  theme,  which 
itself  is  a  literary  element,  but  also  to  the  way 
things  are  put,  —  the  inevitable  word,  the  moving 
figure,  the  arresting  phrase,  the  skilfully  turned 
sentence,  the  architectonics  of  the  thought.  All 
these  are  the  means  by  which  soul  communicates 
with  soul,  the  vehicle  of  the  business  of  life. 

Let  us  not  be  too  suspicious  of  this  idea  of  liter- 
ary art,  as  if  it  meant  nothing  but  rhetorical  tricks 
and  glamours,  or  as  if  it  reached  on  only  to  gor- 

1  Stevenson,  Virginibus  Puerisque:  Truth  of  Intercourse. 

55 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

geous  air-castles  of  poetry  and  romance.  It  is  a 
much  more  honest  and  sturdy  thing  than  this 
notion  would  imply.  It  is  in  fact  just  the  art  of 
giving  to  a  truth  the  life  which  its  intrinsic  nature 
and  its  fit  audience  demand;  nothing  else.  Let 
us,  to  illustrate,  take  that  remark  of  the  foregoing 
chapter,  that  the  Hebrew  Wisdom,  beginning  with 
detached  observations  on  life,  grew  into  a  body  of 
utterance  which  may  be  called  a  veritable  phi- 
losophy, adapted  throughout  to  scholars  indeed, 
but  also  to  the  common  man  who  most  needs  it. 
Now  a  philosophy  is  essentially  a  scientific  thing: 
clear  cold  truth;  and  supposably  all  the  recep- 
tiveness  we  need  bring  to  it  is  head  enough  to 
understand  it,  and  to  lay  it  up  in  our  memory 
and  reason.  But  —  to  quote  Stevenson  again  — 
"there  will  always  be  hours  when  we  refuse  to 
be  put  off  by  the  feint  of  explanation,  nicknamed 
science;  and  demand  instead  some  palpitating 
image  of  our  estate,  that  shall  represent  the  trou- 
bled and  uncertain  element  in  which  we  dwell, 
and  satisfy  reason  by  the  means  of  art."  l  Some- 
how, though  our  reason  and  sense  of  fact  are  con- 
vinced of  the  solid  truth  that  the  square  of  x  +y 
is  equal  to  x*+2xy+y2,  yet  we  want  something 
more  concrete  than  this,  something  that  shall  take 

1  Stevenson,  Virginibus  Puerisque:  Pan's  Pipes 

56 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

hold  of  us,  that  shall  picture  things,  that  shall 
make  us  realize  how  things  move  in  life.  Well, 
that  is  just  what  the  literary  element  brings  to 
reinforce  and  fill  out  the  scientific.  It  applies 
accurately  to  the  way  Wisdom  advanced  from  the 
severely  cut  aphorisms  of  Proverbs  to  the  glow- 
ing portrayal  of  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  and  on  to  the 
intense  eloquence  of  Job,  with  its  dramatic  scene 
and  persons  and  plot;  then  on  to  Ecclesiastes, 
with  its  assumed  confessions  of  a  disillusioned 
king;  then  further  on  to  the  New  Testament 
parables,  with  their  homely  "truth  embodied  in  a 
tale."  It  is  all  one  tissue  of  literary  art,  which 
begins  to  appear  and  make  itself  felt  as  soon 
as  the  truth  does,  and  which  adapts  itself  finely 
to  its  task,  as  it  knocks  for  better  access  to  the 
beating  heart  of  man.  A  small  thing  it  is  to 
say  we  have  here  a  literary  road  to  traverse;  we 
miss  the  fulness  and  balance  of  our  subject  if 
we  pursue  any  other. 


The  mould,  the  type,  of  Wisdom  utterance,  like 
its  thinking,  is  ideally  simple  and  direct,  but  also 
flexible  and  limpid.  What  we  are  concerned  with 
here  is  to  trace  how,  in  accordance  with  the  thought 
itself,  the  form  too  passed  through  a  period  of 

57 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

change  and  growth,  —  how  in  a  true  sense,  as 
demonstrated  by  thought  and  form  alike,  the 
literature  of  Wisdom  was  an  evolution. 

As  the  Hebrew  sages  worked  among  the  com- 
mon people,  giving  counsel  in  the  city  gates  and 
market-places,  so,  we  may  assume,  they  chose 
advisedly  a  vehicle  of  utterance  which  answered 
to  the  popular  idiom  and  taste.  What  this  was 
has  been  hinted  in  the  early  folk  utterances  that 
were  quoted  in  the  foregoing  chapter :  in  the 
epigrammatic  phrasing  of  Samson's  riddle,  and 
in  the  applied  similitudes  of  Jotham's  parable. 
The  common  folk,  it  would  seem,  liked  such  a 
challenge  to  keen  wits  as  is  involved  in  these  rid- 
dling maxims;  just  as  the  English  folk  like  stories 
of  battle  and  adventure,  and  as  the  Arabs  like  tales 
of  sensuous  fancy.  In  its  classic  and  so  to  say 
chiselled  purity  the  Hebrew  form  may  best  be  seen, 
perhaps,  in  the  section  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs 
extending  from  the  tenth  to  the  middle  of  the 
twenty-second  chapter,  and  headed  specifically  The 
Proverbs  of  Solomon;  which  section  is  probably 
the  oldest  body  of  Wisdom  counsel  preserved  to 
us.  There  we  can  see  what  the  folk  utterance  be- 
comes when  it  is  reduced  from  oral  to  written  form, 
freed  from  extraneous  elements  and  trimmings, 

o    * 

and  presented  in  its  essentials,  as  it  were  crystallized. 

58 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

As  we  turn  over  this  collection  of  proverbs  we 
observe  that  each  verse  is  simply  a  couplet,  a  pair 
of  lines  answering  pithily  to  each  other.  In  that 
one  couplet  the  lesson  in  hand  is  all  comprised. 
The  next  verse  contains  a  new  lesson,  generally 
quite  unconnected  with  its  neighbor  verses.  So  far 
as  subject  is  concerned,  we  might  as  well  call 
them  chapters  as  verses;  for  each  embodies  a 
whole  topic  in  one  brief  circuit.  The  Hebrew  name 
for  this  peculiar  structure  of  assertion  is  maskaly 
which  term  is  the  word  oftenest  translated  prov- 
erb. The  Book  of  Proverbs  is  Sepher  M'sbalim, 
the  Book  of  Mashals.  The  three  thousand  wise 
utterances  of  King  Solomon  were  mashals.  So 
also  were  Balaam's  discourses  in  the  Book  of 
Numbers;1  and  when  after  a  pause  Job  takes  up 
his  discourse  anew,  the  Hebrew  says  he  continues 
his  mashal.2  The  literary  work  in  which  Eccle- 
siastes  was  engaged  was  the  composing  and  com- 
piling and  arranging  of  mashals.3  Evidently  this 
is  a  term  of  pretty  comprehensive  meaning.  The 
mere  idea  of  couplet,  however  the  lines  are 
rhymed  together,  does  not  fill  it  out ;  neither  does 
our  word  proverb,  as  we  ordinarily  understand 

1  Numbers  xxiii,  7,  18;   xxiv,  3,  15,  20,  23. 
1  Job  xxvii,  i;   xxix,  i. 
3  Ecclesiastes  xii.  9. 

59 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

it.    What,  then,  shall  we  make  of  it,  —  what  in 
its  most  fundamental  significance  is  a  mashal  ? 

The  word  means  primarily  a  likeness  or  com- 
parison; and  all  that  it  came  eventually  to  stand 
for  grew  probably  out  of  the  elementary  fact  that 
one  thing  was  employed  to  elucidate  another. 
This  might  be  brought  about  in  different  ways, 
or  on  larger  and  smaller  scales.  When  the  wise 
woman  whom  Joab  employed  so  deftly  induced 
King  David  to  decree  the  restoration  of  Absalom 
from  banishment,  she  did  it  by  means  of  what 
we  call  a  parallel  case,  or  parity  of  reasoning, 
so  skilfully  managed  that  when  the  king  passed 
judgment  on  the  one  case  he  had  committed 
himself  to  the  principle  of  the  other.1  The  story 
of  Nathan,  too,  in  the  case  of  Uriah,  was  a  similar 
parallel  case,  embodied  in  a  homely  tale  of  a  poor 
man  and  a  ewe  lamb.2  Evidently .  King  David 
was  keenly  susceptible  to  the  values  of  spiritual 
analogy;  perhaps  that  faculty  was  his  contribution 
to  his  brilliant  son's  largeness  of  heart.  But  also, 
in  skilful  literary  hands  this  comparing  might  be 
made  by  using  an  object  of  sense  perception  to 
picture  a  concept  of  the  mind,  or  a  familiar  thing 
to  simplify  a  relatively  strange  one;  in  other  words, 
by  employing  a  simile.  When  it  is  said  of  King 

1  2  Samuel  riv,  4-24.  »  2  Samuel  xii,  1-7. 

60 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

Solomon  that  "he  spake  of  trees,  from  the  cedar 
that  is  in  Lebanon  even  unto  the  hyssop  that 
springeth  out  of  the  wall;  he  spake  also  of  beasts, 
and  of  fowl,  and  of  creeping  things,  and  of  fishes,"  * 
—  this  is  what  we  understand:  not  that  like 
Gilbert  White  of  Selborne  he  made  extensive  re- 
searches in  natural  history,  but  rather  that  from 
all  these  fields  he  drew  similitudes  and  analogies, 
to  set  forth  his  teachings  of  Wisdom.  A  charming 
glimpse  this  affords  us  of  that  naive  zestful  literary 
insight  which,  like  Shakespeare's  banished  duke, 

"  Finds  tongues  in  trees,  books  in  the  running  brooks, 
Sermons  in  stones,  and  good  in  everything."  2 

Solomon  was  so  clever  at  that  kind  of  analogical 
thinking  that  his  fame  has  survived  through  the 
world  and  the  ages;  but  no  impulse  is  more  primi- 
tive and  natural,  as  soon  as  one's  thoughts  are 
awake  to  the  meanings  of  life,  than  to  inquire 
what  there  is  in  things  unseen  and  inner  that  is 
like  things  we  see.  We  live  largely  in  analogies 
and  similitudes;  as  an  apostle  puts  it,  we  see  as 
in  a  mirror.  And  though  so  spontaneous,  this 
manner  of  thinking  is  by  no  means  rudimental  or 
crude;  it  can  be  carried  to  any  depth.  From  these 
clever  analogies  of  Solomon,  taking  note  of  com- 
mon objects  of  nature,  our  thoughts  run  forward 

1  i  Kings  iv,  33.  *  As  you  Like  It,  Act  ii,  sc.  i. 

61 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

to  the  frequent  question  of  Him  who  said,  "  Where- 
unto  shall  I  liken  the  kingdom  of  heaven  ?"  and 
we  recognize  that  our  Lord's  parables  themselves, 
making  use  of  pearls  and  coins  and  leaven  and 
mustard  seed  and  field  lilies,  were  a  divinely 
perfected  form  of  the  mashal,  at  once  ideally 
simple  and  endlessly  deep.  Nay,  we  think  also 
how  the  loftiest  poetic  minds  have  filled  life  with 
illuminative  similitude;  how  Goethe,  at  the  sum- 
mit of  his  greatest  literary  creation,  could  sing,  — 

"  Alles  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ein  Gleichniss,"  — 

everything  transitory  is  only  a  parable,  a  mashal, 
the  shadow  of  something  real  and  eternal. 

In  the  three  hundred  and  seventy-five  proverbs 
which  make  up  the  section  of  the  book  already 
referred  to,  we  find  the  mashal  reduced  to  its 
severest  and  most  condensed  terms;  suggestive 
perhaps  of  the  labor  of  the  file  which  was  deemed 
necessary  to  make  them  classical  work  of  the 
Solomon  school.  Each  one,  as  I  have  said,  is  a 
couplet,  in  which  the  second  line  takes  up  and 
completes  the  circuit  of  thought  started  by  the 
first.  This  is  to  Hebrew  poetry  what  rhyme  is 
to  ours;  it  is  a  veritable  rhyme,  only  a  rhyme  of 
thought  rather  than  of  sound  and  syllable.  I  need 
not  go  here  minutely  into  the  varieties  of  relation 

62 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

that  may  exist  between  the  lines.1  Sometimes  the 
mashal  is  just  a  plain  simile:  for  example,  — 

"As  vinegar  to  the  teeth,  and  as  smoke  to  the  eyes, 
So  is  the  sluggard  to  them  that  send  him." 

Sometimes  it  says  essentially  the  same  thing  twice 
over  in  different  words;  as,  — 

"He  that  is  slow  to  anger  is  better  than  the  mighty; 
And  he  that  ruleth  his  spirit  than  he  that  taketh  a  city." 

Sometimes  the  comparison  between  things  is  made 
by  the  word  better;  as,  — 

"Better  is  a  dry  morsel,  and  quietness  therewith, 
Than  an  house  full  of  sacrifices  with  strife." 

In  the  majority  of  cases,  in  the  early  part  of  this 
collection,  the  mashal  embodies  some  form  of 
contrast,  or  antithesis;  as, — 

"Treasures  of  wickedness  profit  nothing; 
But  righteousness  delivereth  from  death." 

As  we  go  on,  however,  the  proportions  change.3 
In  brief,  the  effort  is  to  make  the  lesson  so  pithy 
and  pointed  that  it  will  awaken  thought  and  at 
the  same  time  leave  a  germ  of  instruction  or  in« 
spiration  in  the  memory.  This,  as  we  see,  is  0 
perfectly  spontaneous  rhetorical  device,  so  natural 
that  we  never  think  of  it  as  literary  art.  But  what 
else  is  it  ? 

1  For  the  cited  examples,  see  Proverbs  x,  26;  xvi,  32;  xvii,  i;  x,  a. 
1  This  matter  of  proportional  distribution  will  be  taken  up  in  the 
next  chapter. 

63 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

I  have  taken  these  examples  from  what  I 
assume,  with  scholars,  to  have  been  the  original 
Wisdom  collection;  representing  as  it  does  the 
kind  of  crystallized  germinal  utterance  which, 
like  the  venerable  saws  and  maxims  so  familiar 
in  our  daily  life,  has  reached  its  form  by  long 
seasoning  and  attrition,  and  which  in  its  fated 
phrasing  of  result  seems  never  to  have  been  made 
but  to  have  grown.  We  get  the  same  feeling  about 
some  of  our  old-time  hymn  tunes,  "Old  Hun- 
dred" or  "Dundee"  or  "St.  Ann's."  It  seems 
an  impertinence  to  suppose  that  a  master  of  music 
should  ever  have  had  to  put  the  notes  of  them 
painfully  and  studiously  together,  revising  and 
erasing  and  trying  again  until  he  got  them  just 
right.  They  seem  rather  to  have  sprung  up  in 
our  own  minds  as  truly  as  in  his,  and  we  cannot 
remember  when  we  did  not  know  them. 

And  so  we  easily  deceive  ourselves  about  the  art 
of  the  proverbs.  An  easy  thing  to  condense  a  life's 
experience  or  a  world  truth  into  the  crisp  saying 
which,  as  soon  as  it  is  uttered,  commends  itself 
as  inevitably,  eternally  right  ?  Well,  it  looks  ideally 
easy.  A  story  is  told  of  a  university  student  whose 
estimate  of  himself  was  not  over  small,  who  once 
remarked  to  his  teacher,  old  Dr.  Francis  Wayland, 
"Huh!  I  don't  see  anything  so  wonderful  in 

64 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

proverbs;  any  one  could  make  loads  of  them." 
"Make  some,"  was  the  doctor's  laconic  response. 
Perhaps  he  did;  but  we  have  not  the  record  of  it, 
nor  the  proverbs. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  from  many  of  the 
finest  literary  minds  testimony  of  the  long  stern 
severity  of  the  art  which  would  reach  the  point 
where  it  has  completely  concealed  its  processes 
in  the  Tightness  of  the  perfected  utterance.  Be- 
yond other  forms  the  mashal  seeks  the  note 
of  the  inevitable.  Shakespeare  puts  this  supreme 
quality  thus:  — 

"Yet  nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean 
But  nature  makes  that  mean:  so,  over  that  art 
Which  you  say  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes.  .  .  .  This  is  an  art 
Which  does  mend  nature,  change  it  rather,  but 
The  art  itself  is  nature."  » 

Such  artistry  begins  with  the  simple  endeavor 
to  reduce  the  assertion  to  the  smallest  number  of 
words  that  will  carry  the  sense,  while  each  word 
chosen  is  the  word  that  weighs  the  most.  But 
underneath  the  workmanship  is  a  great  depth  of 
nature,  experience,  personality,  which  precipitates 
itself  into  vital  form.  Without  this  latter  quality, 
as  we  see  in  the  pinchbeck  aphorisms  of  Disraeli, 
we  have  only  a  kind  of  posturing  with  phrases. 

1  Winter's  Tale,  Act  iv.  sc.  4. 

65 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

Here  is  a  stanza  of  literary  counsel  which  I  think 
well  embodies  the  philosophy  of  the  mashal:  — 

"  Prune  thou  thy  words;  the  thoughts  control 
That  o'er  thee  swell  and  throng:  — 
They  will  condense  within  thy  soul, 
And  change  to  purpose  strong."  l 

And  the  following  description  from  Joubert,  who 
for  his  lifelong  devotion  to  exact  utterance  is 
eminently  entitled  to  speak,  might  have  been  made 
with  reference  to  the  proverbs:  "To  finish  and 
complete  your  thought!  —  how  long  it  takes,  how 
rare  it  is,  what  an  immense  delight!  For  finished 
thought  easily  makes  its  way  into  the  mind;  to 
please,  it  need  not  even  be  beautiful;  it  is  enough 
that  it  should  be  finished.  The  condition  of  the 
soul  from  which  it  springs  communicates  itself  to 
other  souls;  and  conveys  to  them  its  own  repose." 3 
These  marks  of  finish  are  especially  noticeable 
in  the  work  of  the  early  Solomonic  sages,  with 
their  classic  model  of  the  two-line  epigram.  Their 
proverbs,  as  has  been  remarked  by  scholars,  are 
not  the  rough-hewn,  run-wild  maxims  such  as  are 
gathered  from  the  lips  of  the  common  folk,  but 
rather  the  studied  utterance  of  men  of  letters. 
They  derive  from  the  folk's  idiom,  indeed,  and 

Cardinal  Newman  is  the  author  of  this.    I  quote  it  at  second 

from  Harrison,  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mitt,  p.  70. 
2  Joubert,  A  Selection  from  his  Thoughts,  p.  208. 

66 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

employ  it;  but  impart  to  it  that  higher  power  of 
nature  which  is  artistic.  One  distinguishes  in 
them  the  influence  of  a  threefold  ideal:  fact,  truth, 
charm.  The  sense  of  fact  that  underlies  them 
produces  the  rudiments  of  keen  observation  and 
verification,  in  a  word,  science,  and  the  scientific 
temper.  The  shaping  of  truth,  the  next  stage, 
connotes  that  the  fact  is  in  proper  combination  and 
proportion  with  nature  and  life,  so  as  to  work  in 
character.  And  the  charm  is  the  literary  touch 
and  finish;  the  attractive,  alluring,  stimulating 
quality.  It  is  interesting  to  note  how  Koheleth 
gives  expression  to  this  naive  ideal:  "Koheleth 
sought  to  find  words  of  pleasantness;  and  what 
was  written  was  upright,  words  of  truth/' 

There  are  indications,  not  numerous  nor  obtru- 
sive, but  still  suggestive,  that  the  makers  of  pro- 
verbs discovered  that  they  were  not  only  coiners 
of  wisdom,  but  men  of  letters.  We  get  in  the  later 
utterances  a  little  sense  of  the  shop.  This  is  what 
one  would  naturally  expect,  and  what  may  be 
paralleled  elsewhere.  As  the  composition  of  ma- 
shals  went  on,  passing  from  a  happy  inspiration  or 
zestful  creativeness  into  a  kind  of  manufacture, 
and  especially  as  it  so  prospered  in  the  refined  ele- 
gance of  a  royal  court,  it  would  be  apt  to  betray 
here  and  there  a  touch  of  artificiality  or  self-con- 

67 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

sciousness,  or  perhaps  be  a  little  over-precious, 
like  the  Euphuistic  fancies  and  conceits  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  court.  We  can  think  what  elegant 
young  litterateurs  would  do  in  the  genial  presence 
of  a  young  king  who  could  say  such  clever  things 
about  trees  and  beasts  and  fowl  and  creeping 
things  and  fishes.  Here  is  a  specimen  of  the  kind 
of  cleverness  that  was  fashionable  at  Elizabeth's 
royal  receptions;  a  cloying  ingenuity  of  compari- 
son, tricked  out  with  alliteration,  which  no  one 
now  can  read  to  any  length.  Euphues  says:  — 

"The  foul  Toade  hath  a  faire  stone  in  his  head: 
the  fine  golde  is  found  in  the  filthy  earth:  the 
sweet  kernell  lyeth  in  the  hard  shell:  vertue  is 
harboured  in  the  heart  of  him  that  most  men 
esteeme  mishapen.  Contrariwise,  if  we  respect 
more  the  outward  shape,  then  the  inward  habit, 
.  .  .  into  how  many  mischiefes  do  wee  fall!  into 
what  blindnesse  are  we  ledde!  Doe  we  not  com- 
monly see  that  in  painted  pottes  is  hidden  the 
deadlyest  poyson  ?  that  in  the  greenest  grasse  is 
ye  greatest  Serpent  ?  in  the  cleerest  water  the 
vglyest  Toade  ?  Doth  not  experience  teach  vs,  that 
in  the  most  curious  Sepulcher  are  enclosed  rotten 
bones  ?  That  the  Cypresse  tree  beareth  a  faire 
leafe,  but  no  fruite  ?  That  the  Estridge  carieth 
faire  feathers,  but  ranke  flesh  ?  How  frantick  are 

68 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

those  louers  which  are  caried  away  with  the  gaye 
glistering  of  the  fine  face!  "  1 

And  so  on,  interminably.  Perhaps  Solomon's 
remarks  on  natural  history  were  a  little  on  this 
order.  But  the  Hebrew  Wisdom  was  too  religiously 
in  earnest,  and  the  Hebrew  genius  too  practical 
and  business-like,  took  itself  too  seriously,  to 
become  a  prey  to  such  elegant  conceits.  So  the 
dominant  strain  of  Wisdom  became  something 
very  different.  Late  in  its  history,  however,  when 
it  is  running  low  for  fresh  thinking,  and  begin- 
ning to  tend  toward  the  solemn  pottering  of  the 
scribes,  the  art  begins  to  stick  out  a  little  toward 
the  made  product,  the  artificial.  W7hen,  for  in- 
stance, we  read  the  so-called  numerical  maxims 
of  Agur,  toward  the  end  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs: 

"  The  horse-leech  hath  two  daughters,  Give,  Give. 
There  are  three  things  that  are  never  satisfied, 
Yea,  four  that  say  not,  Enough.  .  .  . 
There  are  three  things  which  are  too  wonderful  for  me, 
Yea,  four  which  I  know  not.  .  .  . 
For  three  things  the  earth  doth  tremble, 
And  for  four,  which  it  cannot  bear.  .  .  . 
There  are  four  things  which  are  little  upon  the  earth, 
But  they  are  exceeding  wise.  .  .  . 
There  are  three  things  which  are  stately  in  their  march, 
Yea,  four  which  are  stately  in  going; "  J  — 

1  Lyly,  Euphttes,  Arber's  ed.,  p.  53  (punctuation  revised). 

2  Proverbs  xxx,  passim. 

69 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

and  when  we  note  that  the  eulogy  of  the  virtuous 
woman,  in  the  last  chapter  of  Proverbs,  is  in  the 
original  an  acrostic  on  the  twenty-two  letters  of 
the  Hebrew  alphabet,  —  well,  the  subject-matter 
is  sound,  but  somehow,  the  working  of  the  mashal 
machine  gets  a  trifle  audible.  If,  as  I  think,  the 
successors  of  the  court  sages  were  the  orders  of 
rabbis  and  scribes,  we  have  some  means  of  judg- 
ing what  the  proverb  can  run  into  when  it  has  got 
beyond  the  inspiration  of  large  issues  of  truth 
and  is  simply  pumping  the  old  engine.  In  the 
Talmudic  book  called  "  Pirke  Aboth,"  or  "  Sayings 
of  the  Jewish  Fathers,"  a  whole  chapter  is  devoted 
to  these  numerical  things;  of  which  this  is  a  speci- 
men: "There  are  four  characters  in  those  who  sit 
under  the  wise:  a  sponge;  a  funnel;  a  strainer; 
and  a  bolt-sieve.  A  sponge,  which  sucks  up  all;  a 
funnel,  which  lets  in  here  and  lets  out  there;  a 
strainer,  which  lets  out  the  wine  and  keeps  back 
the  dregs;  a  bolt-sieve,  which  lets  out  the  pollard 
and  keeps  back  the  flour."  1 

A  far  cry  this  from  the  severe  classicism  of  tht 
early  proverbs;  but  it  is  what  we  may  expect  when 
form  outstrips  weightiness  of  content.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  wonder  is  that  the  body  of 
Wisdom  has  retained  so  little  lumber  or  artificial- 

1  Taylor,  Sayings  of  the  Jewish  Fathers^  p.  91. 

70 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

ity;   that  the  wealth  of  thought  and  the  phrasal 
mould  balance  up  so  well. 

II 

From  this  primitive  and  exterior  form  of  the 
rnashal  I  go  on  to  bring  up  another  trait  which  will 
enable  us  to  get  a  little  more  closely  at  its  inner 
literary  value;  noting  at  the  same  time  how  it  re- 
mained candid  and  sanely  tempered.  The  Jewish 
folk,  as  we  have  seen,  were  fond  of  that  kind  of 
intercourse  wherein  was  afforded  a  contest  of  wits. 
Samson's  riddle  throws  light  on  a  people's  genius. 
Is  it  not  natural,  then,  to  suppose  that  something 
of  a  riddling  character  was  essential  to  the  Wis- 
dom utterance  ?  that  the  sages,  in  obedience  to 
this  native  Hebrew  bent,  labored  to  put  their 
proverbs  in  such  phrase  that  their  hearers  would 
have  to  lay  out  some  keen  thinking  of  their  own 
upon  them  and  as  it  were  get  the  right  combina- 
tion, the  proper  attitude  to  things,  to  unlock  them  ? 

Yes:  there  was  this  element  in  Wisdom;  and 
doubtless  we  have  to  reckon  with  a  tendency 
common  to  all  who  have  the  keys  of  knowledge, 
the  tendency  to  make  their  knowledge  to  a  degree 
secret,  cryptic,  esoteric,  a  knowledge  available 
only  to  the  initiated.  The  later  scribes,  who  got 
rather  fonder  of  having  Wisdom,  or  of  being 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

reputed  to  have  it,  than  of  imparting  it,  developed 
quite  a  fund  of  cabalistic  or  secret  doctrine. 
They  got  to  speaking  like  Tennyson's  ancient 
seer,  in  sonorous  epigrams :  — 

"Know  ye  not  then  the  Riddling  of  the  Bards: 
'Confusion,  and  illusion,  and  relation, 
Elusion,  and  occasion,  and  evasion'?"1 

And  indeed  to  an  extent  this  kind  of  thing  is 
wholesome.  Bunyan,  in  his  description  of  Gaius's 
feast,  in  the  Second  Part  of  the  "Pilgrim's  Pro- 
gress," implies  what  is  the  use  of  such  riddling. 
"While  they  were  thus  talking,  they  were  pre- 
sented with  another  dish,  and  't  was  a  dish  of  Nuts. 
Then  said  some  at  the  Table,  'Nuts  spoil  tender 
Teeth,  specially  the  Teeth  of  Children;  '  which 
when  Gaius  heard,  he  said,  — 

"  '  Hard  Texts  are  Nuts  (I  will  not  call  them  cheaters) 
Whose  Shells  do  keep  their  Kernels  from  the  Eaters. 
Ope  then  the  Shells,  and  you  shall  have  the  Meat, 
They  here  are  brought  for  you  to  crack  and  eat.' "  2 

That  the  healthy  challenge  to  serious  thinking, 
which  is  what  this  riddling  implies,  is  also  a  means 
of  securing  that  spiritual  combination  which 
alone  can  unlock  this  kind  of  truth,  is  recognized 

*  O 

by  our  Lord,  in  the  reason  He  gave  for  putting 
his  teaching  in  the  form  of  mashal,  or  parable. 

1  Tennyson,  Gareth  and  Lynette. 
1  Bunyan,  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Part  II. 
72 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

"Why  speakest  thou  unto  them  in  parables?" 
His  disciples  asked  in  some  astonishment.  And 
the  reason  He  gave  was,  In  order  that  none  may 
understand  but  those  who  are  rightly  receptive. 
They  must  have  in  them  some  truth  with  which 
this  truth  can  affiliate;  whosoever  hath,  to  him 
shall  be  given;  you  cannot  be  nourished  except 
as  you  assimilate.  Thus  it  was  our  Lord  himself 
who  defined  and  justified  this  riddle  element  in 
the  Wisdom  literature.  He  it  was  who  inherited 
the  genuine  Wisdom  strain  in  the  New  Testament 
era,  when  He  taught  as  one  having  authority,  and 
not  as  the  scribes. 

For  the  rest,  it  is  through  that  wholesome 
tendency  to  the  kind  of  paradox,  or  association  of 
remote  ideas,  which  was  called  a  "dark  saying" 
that  we  get  at  a  very  central  characteristic  of 
Wisdom,  and  at  the  name  which  best  designates 
its  literary  fibre.  In  the  same  description  already 
quoted  from,  Bunyan  models  one  of  his  riddles 
on  a  Solomonic  proverb :  — 

"Then  said  the  old  Gentleman,  *My  good 
Landlord,  while  we  are  cracking  your  Nuts,  if 
you  please,  do  you  open  this  Riddle:  — 

"  '  A  man  there  was,  tho'  some  did  count  him  mad, 
The  more  he  cast  away  the  more  he  had.' 

"  Then  they  all  gave  good  heed,  wondring  what 
73  . 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

good  Gaius  would  say;  so  he  sat  still  awhile,  and 
then  thus  replied:  — 

"  '  He  that  bestows  his  Goods  upon  the  Poor, 
Shall  have  as  much  again,  and  ten  times  more.' 

"Then  said  Joseph,  *I  dare  say  Sir,  I  did  not 
think  you  could  a  found  it  out.* 

"  *  Oh,'  said  Gaius,  '  I  have  been  trained  up  in  this 
way  a  great  while,  nothing  teaches  like  experience. 
I  have  learned  of  my  Lord  to  be  kind,  and  have 
found  by  experience  that  I  have  gained  thereby. 

"  '  There  is  that  scattereth,  yet  increaseth, 

And  there  is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is  meet,  but  it  tendeth 

to  Poverty. 

There  is  that  maketh  himself  Rich,  yet  hath  nothing; 
There  is  that  maketh  himself  Poor,  yet  hath  great  Riches.' "  l 

These  two  proverbs  quoted  by  Gaius  are  good 
examples  of  what  is  called  a  "  dark  saying."  We 
can  easily  think  such  a  saying  out,  if  we  have  the 
fitting  spiritual  attitude.  It  is  just  dark  enough 
to  challenge  a  man's  wits  to  unravel  and  probe, 
yet  light  enough,  like  the  gleam  of  a  lamp  behind 
a  screen,  to  whet  curiosity.  The  couplet  in  the 
preface  to  Proverbs  in  which  this  term  occurs, 
and  in  which  several  aspects  of  the  mashal  are 
mentioned,  Professor  Toy  thus  translates :  — 

"  That  he  may  understand  proverb  and  parable, 
The  words  of  sages  and  their  aphorisms." 
1  Gaius  quotes  from  Proverbs  xi,  24. 

74 


Here  is  the  term  of  which  we  have  been  in  search: 
aphorism.  The  literature  of  Wisdom  is  an  apho- 
ristic literature:  to  its  principle  of  comparison  or 
analogy  it  adds  that  pointed,  clean-cut,  accurately 
turned  phrase  which  we  call  aphorism.  This  term 
may  be  taken  for  its  mould,  as  the  other,  analogy, 
may  be  taken  for  its  dominating  essence. 

It  is  advisable  to  examine  this  term  a  little  here, 
on  account  of  the  literary  values  that  associate 
themselves  with  it.  What,  then,  in  its  core  mean- 
ing, so  to  say,  is  an  aphorism  ? 

We  may  begin  with  a  description  by  John 
Morley,  in  an  essay  of  his  on  the  subject  of 
Aphorisms.  "The  essence  of  aphorism,"  he  says, 
"is  the  compression  of  a  mass  of  thought  and 
observation  into  a  single  saying.  It  is  the  very 
opposite  of  dissertation  and  declamation;  its  dis- 
tinction is  not  so  much  ingenuity,  as  good  sense 
brought  to  a  point;  it  ought  to  be  neither  enig- 
matical nor  flat,  neither  a  truism  on  the  one  hand, 
nor  a  riddle  on  the  other." l 

From  this  it  would  seem  that  the  riddle  element 
is  not  of  the  essence  of  it,  but  only  a  spice  or  savor 
to  give  it  life  and  penetration.  And  this  is  true. 
The  claim  of  Wisdom  on  the  understanding  of  all 
men  was  such  a  regulative  of  its  literary  form 

1  Morley,  Studies  in  Literature,  p.  59. 

75 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

that  the  aphorism  must  needs  be  an  utterance 
not  hidden  or  cryptic,  but  inviting  to  all.  The  ele- 
ment that  is  essential,  however,  in  its  diametric 
contrast  to  dissertation  and  declamation,  is  its 
uncompromising  absoluteness.  What  it  says  is  no 
guesswork,  but  just  so.  In  a  word,  it  is  sheer  asser- 
tion; with  no  shading,  no  exceptions,  no  saving 
clauses,  and  no  proof  at  all.  You  may  take  it  or 
leave  it,  but  no  chance  is  given  you  to  gainsay  it. 
That  is  to  say,  here  in  the  aphorism  we  have 
the  result,  the  crystallized  conclusion,  of  a  great 
deal  of  cerebration,  without  the  processes;  it  has 
reached  the  point  where,  as  soon  as  it  is  enunci- 
ated, we  can  see  its  truth;  and  it  is  put  into  pun- 
gent and  pointed  phrase  just  in  order  that  the 
reader  may  be  stung  to  think  put  the  process  of 
cerebration  for  himself.  Lord  Bacon,  in  his  wise, 
solid  way,  has  noted  this  absoluteness  of  apho- 
risms, and  what  it  requires  both  in  writer  and 
reader.  "The  writing  in  aphorisms,"  he  says, 
"  hath  many  excellent  virtues,  whereto  the  writing 
in  method  doth  not  approach.  For  first,  it  trieth 
the  writer,  whether  he  be  superficial  or  solid:  for 
aphorisms,  except  they  should  be  ridiculous,  can- 
not be  made  but  of  the  pith  and  heart  of  sciences; 
for  discourse  of  illustration  is  cut  off;  recitals  of 
examples  are  cut  off;  discourse  of  connexion  and 

76 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

order  is  cut  off;  descriptions  of  practice  are  cut 
off.  So  there  remaineth  nothing  to  fill  the  apho- 
risms but  some  good  quantity  of  observation:  and 
therefore  no  man  can  suffice,  nor  in  reason  will 
attempt,  to  write  aphorisms,  but  he  that  is  sound 
and  grounded."  l 

Writing  in  aphorisms,  we  may  illustrate  by  way 
of  supplement  to  Lord  Bacon,  is  like  painting 
in  fresco.  Just  as  the  fresco  painter,  because  his 
work  dries  so  instantly,  must  make  every  touch  just 
right  at  once,  having  no  chance  to  alter;  so  the 
writer  in  aphorisms  must  say  the  true  thing  in 
one  absolute  assertion;  he  has  no  chance  to  touch 
up,  or  tone  off,  or  shade  down.  If  his  maxim  is 
over-violent,  or  over-tame,  or  crooked,  or  only 
half  true,  it  must  remain  so. 

We  can  think  from  this  what  a  responsibility  the 
sages  assumed  by  their  very  manner  of  expression; 
how  boldly  they  dipped  into  life,  saying  things 
about  duty  and  destiny  which  could  no  more  be 
gainsaid  than  an  axiom,  condensing  vast  experi- 
ence and  insight  into  assertions  on  which  they  felt 
the  weight  of  a  manhood  and  a  world  could  be 
hung.  Such  was  essentially  the  literary  mould  that 
they  chose  for  their  philosophy  of  life.  It  is  not 
speculative  nor  problematic,  but  unescapably  true. 

1  Bacon,  Advancement  oj  Learning,  Book  II,  xvii,  7. 

77 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 


in 


Now  this  aphoristic  mould  of  utterance  is  good 
for  some  kinds  of  truth;    but  not  for  all.     Good 
for  the  great  inevitable  mandates  of  righteousness 
and  mercy  and  honor,  the  life  values  that  we  know 
already  but  are  continually  prone  to  neglect  and 
evade.    It  is  not  them  that  we  question;   it  is  our- 
selves that  we  need  to  probe  with  a  great  smiting, 
piercing  exaction  of  conduct.    But  for  a  truth  that 
may  fairly  be  called  into  question  as  not  yet  estab- 
lished, or  for  a  truth  so  laden  with  exceptions  and 
limitations  as  to  appear  only  half  or  three  quar- 
ters true,  something  more  flexible  and  compro- 
mising than  absolute  assertion  is  needed.    Not  all 
can  see  things  intuitively ;  men  must  be  guided  by 
logic  and  reasoning  step  by  step.   Then,  too,  men 
come  to  see  that  the  truths  of  life  hang  together, 
one  depending  on  another,  one   reinforcing  and 
enriching  another.     We  cannot  endure  to  leave 
our  thoughts  a  collection  of  independent  maxims, 
like  marbles,  each  an  infinitely  repellent  particle. 
They  must  be  alive,  with  tendrils  and  tentacles 
by  which  they  lay  hold  on  each  other.    In  other 
words,  in  a  growing  literature  like  this  of  Wisdom, 
wherein  larger  areas  of  life  and  being  come  pro- 
gressively into  sight,  the  claim  of  continuity,  of 

78 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

felted  and  interwoven  thought,  of  ideas  which  bear 
to  others  the  relation  of  premises  and  corolla- 
ries, must  sooner  or  later  make  itself  felt,  beyond 
what  the  detached  couplet  or  trenchant  aphorism 
can  afford  accommodation  for.  With  the  growing 
body  of  thought  there  must  keep  pace  a  growing, 
obedient,  flexible  vehicle  of  expression. 

This  is  just  what  takes  place.  It  shows  its  effect 
both  in  the  form  and  in  the  mutual  relationship  of 
the  mashal.  The  couplet  still  remains  the  type, 
the  nucleus  of  assertion;  and  in  general  the  Wis- 
dom thought  advances,  steps  forward  as  it  were, 
by  pairs  of  lines,  a  kind  of  thought-rhyme.  Pope's 
heroic  couplet,  as  seen,  for  instance,  in  his  "  Essay 
on  Man,"  furnishes  the  nearest  English  analogy 
to  this  kind  of  structure.  But  as  related  to  on- 
ward progress,  there  is  a  great  difference  in  the 
way  these  two  lines  rhyme  together.  In  the  earliest 
collection  of  proverbs  (the  section  of  Solomonic 
maxims  beginning  Proverbs  x,  already  referred 
to)  there  is  a  great  predominance  of  the  anti- 
thetic couplet :  contrasts  galore  between  good  and 
wicked,  receptive  and  scorners,  industrious  and 
lazy,  wise  and  foolish;  for  example, — 

"Poverty  and  shame  shall  be  to  him  that  refuseth  instruction: 
But  he  that  regardeth  reproof  shall  be  honored."  ' 
1  Proverbs  xiii,  18. 

79 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

This  kind  of  proverb  just  traverses  its  brief  thought 
circuit,  and  coming  back  to  the  starting-point  closes 
the  case;  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said,  either 
by  way  of  reply  or  of  addition;  nothing  for  it  but 
to  open  a  new  circuit,  on  some  other  subject.  The 
next  verse  to  the  one  just  quoted  does  not  seem  to 
grow  out  of  it,  or  to  have  clear  relation  to  it :  — 

"The  desire  accomplished  is  sweet  to  the  soul: 
But  it  is  abomination  to  fools  to  depart  from  evil."  1 

As  soon,  however,  as  we  get  beyond  this  earliest 
collection,  yes,  and  in  increasing  proportion  before, 
the  hard  metallic  antithesis  begins  to  yield  and 
melt  into  a  more  genial  form.  The  second  line  of 
the  couplet,  instead  of  glaring  at  the  first  in  oppo- 
sition, repeats  the  idea  of  the  first,  or  enlarges 
upon  it;  so  that  the  two  lines  are  concerned  with 
saying  more  completely  the  same  thing.  But  if 
you  can  repeat  a  thing  once,  you  can  more  than 
once;  it  is  thrown  open  for  additions;  you  can 
go  on  to  give  consequences,  or  reasons,  or  deeper 
involvements.  This  is  precisely  what  takes  place 
as  we  advance  in  the  proverb  book.  The  very  first 
proverb  in  the  next  section  (after  the  prefatory 
note,  Proverbs  xxii,  17-21)  reads  thus:  — 

"Rob  not  the  poor,  because  he  is  poor: 
Neither  oppress  the  afflicted  in  the  gate: 

1  Proverbs  xiii,  19. 
80 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

For  the  Lord  will  plead  their  cause, 

And  spoil  the  soul  of  those  that  spoiled  them."  * 

Here,  the  two  couplets,  each  of  which  is  of  that 
parallelistic  kind,  go  on  to  make  a  quatrain,  the 
third  and  fourth  lines  giving  the  consequence,  or 
reason,  of  the  first  and  second.  Nor  does  it  stop 
with  quatrains.  Once  limbered  up,  the  mashal 
is  free  to  flow  on  in  stanzas  of  four,  six,  a  dozen 
lines,  as  the  subject  dictates;  in  which  stanzas 
the  similitude  begins  to  revel  a  little  in  its  own 
beauty,  and  blossom  into  a  poem  having  not  only 
a  lesson,  but  an  atmosphere  and  a  charm  of  im- 
agery. Here  is  an  example  of  the  freer  mashal; 
it  comes  in  the  Hezekian  collection,  and  is  enti- 
tled by  Professor  Moulton  a  "  Folk-Song  of  Good 
Husbandry:"  — 

"Be  thou  diligent  to  know  the  state  of  thy  flocks, 
And  look  well  to  thy  herds. 
For  riches  are  not  for  ever; 
And  doth  the  crown  endure  to  every  generation? 
The  hay  appeareth,  and  the  tender  grass  showeth  itself, 
And  herbs  of  the  mountains  are  gathered. 
The  lambs  are  for  thy  clothing, 
And  the  goats  are  the  price  of  the  field. 
And  thou  shalt  have  goats'  milk  enough  for  thy  food, 
For  the  food  of  thy  household, 
And  for  the  maintenance  for  thy  maidens."  3 

This  is  conceived  not  merely  in  the  hard  didactic 

1  Proverbs  xrii,  22,  23.  *  Proverbs  xxvii,  23-27. 

81 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

spirit,  but  with  some  degree  of  the  lyric,  that  is, 
as  a  song;  and  from  this  we  can  feel  how  much 
more  genial  and  expansive  a  thing  the  mashal  has 
become  than  we  noted  in  those  early  antitheses. 
Nay,  in  one  case  something  like  a  refrain,  a  pecul- 
iarly lyric  device,  is  used,  the  same  refrain  for  two 
songs:  namely,  the  song  of  The  Sluggard,  in  the 
sixth  chapter,  and  of  The  Field  of  the  Slothful, 
in  the  twenty-fourth.1 

So  this  synonymous  couplet,  as  it  is  called, 
which  becomes  the  prevailing  Wisdom  type,  re- 
veals good  capabilities.  If  not  a  good  instrument 
of  philosophical  disquisition,  of  reasoning  and 
slow  research  and  speculation,  it  can  by  a  kind 
of  accumulation  of  detail  do  very  telling  work 
in  describing  things.  This  is  what  it  does.  It 
is  an  instrument  of  moving  and  trenchant  por- 
trayal, wherein  concrete  images  flash  and  glitter 
and  burn  themselves  into  the  mind.  It  begins  with 
just  collecting  together  couplets  in  groups  on  some 
related  topic:  on  fools,  on  the  king,  on  the  slug- 
gard, on  social  pests  ;  approaching  each  topic,  so 
to  say,  by  several  picturing  thoughts  or  images. 
This  we  see  in  the  early  part  of  the  Hezekian  sec- 
tion, which  begins  Proverbs  xxv.  But  what  it  is 
capable  of  developing  to,  we  can  see  in  the  praises 

1  Proverbs  vi,  10,  n;  xxiv,  33,  34. 
82 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

of  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  in  the  early-late  chapters 
of  Proverbs,  and  the  sublime  address  from  the 
whirlwind,  in  Job,  and  the  portrayal  of  decaying 
old  age,  in  the  last  chapter  of  Ecclesiastes.  From 
these,  which  are  as  great  description  as  there  is  in 
the  world,  we  can  think  to  what  majestic  heights 
of  poetry  the  sustained  mashal  may  rise. 

To  realize  how  this  felt  demand  for  continuity 
of  explanation  and  argument,  of  interrelation  and 
grounding,  makes  itself  felt  in  the  larger  mutual 
relationship  of  the  mashal,  we  must  think  of  a 
whole  book  of  Wisdom  at  once.  In  Job,  where  the 
first  great  central  attack  is  made  on  the  motives 
and  sanctions  of  Wisdom,  there  are  two  under- 
flowing  currents  of  continuous  progress,  acting 
to  bind  the  mashal  couplets  together.  There  is 
first  a  current  of  argument  or  controversy,  espe- 
cially on  the  part  of  the  friends  of  Job,  in  which 
they  are  trying  on  their  narrow  grounds  to  justify 
the  baffling  ways  of  God  to  men,  and  to  maintain 
a  Wisdom  which  has  congealed  into  a  system  and 
an  orthodoxy.  Then  deeper  than  this,  and  bearing 
this  along  as  it  were  on  its  surface,  there  is  a  tidal 
current  of  narrative,  with  its  fitted  scene,  its 
dramatis  persona,  its  progressive  plot,  its  denoue- 
ment; wherein  we  read  how  the  soul  of  manhood, 
in  the  person  of  Job,  rises  against  its  doom,  and 

S3 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

how  in  the  more  vital  grounding  of  Wisdom  it 
makes  progress  to  an  immensely  higher  table-land 
of  loyalty  and  revelation. 

In  Ecclesiastes  the  unitary  current,  though  not 
less  real,  is  more  complex  and  less  skilfully  wrought 
out.  As  in  Job,  a  character  is  assumed,  the  char- 
acter of  King  Solomon,  at  once  king  and  sage;  but 
it  is  only  to  a  very  limited  extent  that  his  character 
figures  as  the  hero,  or  personage,  of  a  story.  The 
current  by  which  the  thought  is  here  made  con- 
tinuous and  progressive  is  rather  a  kind  of  induc- 
tive process,  an  accumulation  of  facts  and  enigmas 
of  life,  from  which,  when  all  are  honestly  owned, 
conclusions  are  drawn.  In  this  process  the  mashal 
becomes  more  prosaic,  and  tends  to  loosen  up 
and  dissolve  the  rigid  couplet  form,  thus  becoming 
better  adapted  to  philosophic  thinking;  but  the 
vehicle  is  a  rather  unhandy  one,  at  the  best.1 

The  main  thing  to  note  about  all  this  is,  that 
in  the  later  Wisdom  books  we  are  no  longer  to 
wander  as  we  will  in  an  arbitrary  miscellany  of 
maxims  and  epigrams,  each  independent  of  the 
others.  Rather,  the  utterances  of  Wisdom  have 
found  a  mutual  relation  and  dependence,  a  course 
and  a  goal.  In  other  words,  Wisdom  has  grown 
into  a  coordinated  system,  which  can  defend  itself 

1  See  my  Words  oj  Koheleth,  pp.  176-179. 
84 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

and  stop  the  gaps  in  its  body  of  thought.  And  the 
form  of  utterance,  beginning  though  it  did  with 
the  self-closing  circuit  of  parallelism  and  antithe- 
sis, has  proved  itself  flexible  enough  to  keep  pace 
with  this  growth;  enlarging  its  tether,  rising  or 
falling,  smiting  into  invective  or  flowing  into  sus- 
tained imagery,  as  the  large  tissue  of  the  subject 
revealed  the  demand. 

To  trace  all  this  is  to  trace  a  distinctively  lit- 
erary process  and  history.  It  corresponds  to  the 
effort  of  Wisdom  not  to  make  an  erudite  system, 
but  to  domesticate  sound  counsel  among  men.  To 
this  end  it  has  not  been  careful  to  stand  on  its 
dignity,  or  to  keep  its  thought  severe  and  abstruse. 
Its  tendency  has  been  uniformly  away  from  the 
esoteric,  away  even  from  the  cryptic  and  riddling, 
except  so  far  as  these  would  give  spice  and  pro- 
voke thought.  And  so  it  has  not  hesitated,  as 
the  issue  demanded,  to  vitalize  itself,  as  we  have 
already  heard  Stevenson  express  it,  by  "some 
palpitating  image  of  our  estate,  that  shall  represent 
the  troubled  and  uncertain  element  in  which  we 
dwell,  and  satisfy  reason  by  the  means  of  art." 1 
To  verify  this,  we  need  do  no  more  than  note  the 
consummate  literary  art  of  the  Book  of  Job,  which 
when  all  elements  are  reckoned  turns  out  to  be  a 

1  See  page  56,  above. 

85 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

good  deal  like  a  novel.  And  this  art  is  kept  close 
to  the  common  man,  to  his  ways  of  thought  and 
feeling,  and  to  his  vital  interests.  With  its  fuller 
sense  of  dealing  with  a  correlated  and  continuous 
truth,  rooted  in  a  deep  life-philosophy,  it  becomes 
less  severe  and  conscious  of  itself;  more  genial 
and  comrade-like ;  as  we  see  in  the  supreme  utter- 
ances of  Wisdom  that  sound  forth  from  the  light 
and  joy  of  the  New  Testament  era.  In  the  Epis- 
tle of  James,  for  instance,  we  find  not  even  the 
assumed  air  and  distinction  of  a  sage,  looking 
down  on  disciples  from  a  height,  and  saying, 
"My  son;"  but  rather  the  intimacy  of  a  fellow 
learner,  writing  a  familiar  letter  and  saying,  "My 
brethren."  And,  at  once  highest  and  winsomest 
of  all,  in  the  New  Testament  parables  the  deepest 
values  of  life  and  wisdom  have  wholly  broken 
down  the  pose  and  formalism  of  the  mashal  and 
embodied  themselves  in  the  limpid  flow  and  free- 
dom of  an  illustrative  tale. 

"  For  Wisdom  dealt  with  mortal  powers, 
Where  truth  in  closest  words  shall  fail, 
When  truth  embodied  in  a  tale 
Shall  enter  in  at  lowly  doors."  l 

To  give  the  highest  truth  access  through  lowly 
doors  to  that  great  House  of  Life  where  learned 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  xxxvi. 

86 


THE  LITERARY  VEHICLE 

and  unlearned,  kings  and  servants,  dwell  together 
and  share  in  one  ideal  of  manhood,  —  is  it  not  an 
act  deriving  from  the  unseen  Love  which  works 
unweariedly  for  the  uplifting  of  every  soul  ?  It  is 
even  so;  and  this  very  literary  development  of 
Wisdom,  with  its  glowing  passion,  its  sense  of  the 
world's  beauty,  its  naive  artistry  of  word  and 
story,  reveals  the  landmarks  in  a  vast  movement 
of  the  Spirit  of  God  witnessing  with  the  spirit  of 
man. 

Thus  the  literary  form  of  Wisdom,  its  body, 
makes  its  soul  visible  and  audible,  gives  it  hands 
and  feet  and  a  persuasive,  musical,  cogent  voice; 
which  men  not  only  must  needs  hear  and  under- 
stand, but  which  for  its  beauty  and  charm  they 
will  love  to  hear.  Nor  only  this :  for  the  aiding 
of  man's  deepening  interpretation  of  his  world 
it  proceeds  increasingly  into  that  systematized,  in- 
terrelated tissue  of  thought  which  is  of  the  essence 
of  reasoning,  and  so  toward  the  goal  of  a  unitary 
working  philosophy.  The  literary  vehicle,  thus 
developed,  is  the  gracious  means  by  which  Our 
Lady  Wisdom  proves,  as  she  says,  that  even  while 
her  secret  abode  is  with  God,  her  delights  are 
with  the  sons  of  men. 


Ill 

STRAIGHT   WISDOM 


COMMON  SENSE  AND  COMMON  VALUES 

I.  The  Book  of  Proverbs  briefly  analyzed. 
II.  The  unitary  wisdom  principle. 

III.  The  beginning;  and  how  conserved. 

IV.  What  Agur  the  son  of  Jakeh  had  at  heart 
V.  The  workable  values  of  life. 


Ill 

STRAIGHT   WISDOM 

WHAT  is  wisdom  ?"  asks  the  English 
statesman,  John  Morley,  in  his 
charming  address  on  Aphorisms ; 
and  then  goes  on  to  answer:  "That  sovereign 
word,  as  has  often  been  pointed  out,  is  used  for 
two  different  things.  It  may  stand  for  knowledge, 
learning,  science,  systematic  reasoning;  or  it  may 
mean,  as  Coleridge  has  defined  it,  common  sense 
in  an  uncommon  degree ;  that  is  to  say,  the  un- 
systematic truths  that  come  to  shrewd,  pene- 
trating, and  observant  minds,  from  their  own 
experience  of  life  and  their  daily  commerce  with 
the  world,  and  that  is  called  the  wisdom  of  life, 
or  the  wisdom  of  the  world,  or  the  wisdom  of  time 
and  the  ages.  The  Greeks,"  he  says  further,  "  had 
two  words  for  these  two  kinds  of  wisdom:  one 
for  the  wise  who  scaled  the  heights  of  thought 
and  knowledge;  another  for  those  who,  without 
logical  method,  technical  phraseology,  or  any  of 
the  parade  of  the  schools,  .  .  .  held  up  the  mir- 

91 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

ror  to  human  nature,  and  took  good  counsel  as  to 
the  ordering  of  character  and  of  life."  * 

It  was  of  this  second  kind  of  wisdom,  the  wis- 
dom of  broad  sagacity,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
that  the  Hebrew  sages  were  students  and  incul- 
cators.  Their  utterances  on  life,  too,  were  just 
common  sense  in  an  uncommon  degree,  common 
sense  raised,  as  it  were,  to  a  higher  power,  and 
pushed  as  far  as  it  would  go,  toward  the  common 
issues  of  life. 

The  controlling  question  of  Hebrew  Wisdom 
reduces  to  a  very  simple  thing.  It  is  at  bottom 
a  question  of  sanity:  it  lies  between  being  wise, 
a  creature  of  large  discourse  looking  before  and 
after,  and  being  a  fool,  with  natural  powers 
atrophied  or  perverted.  And  the  final  term  in 
which  that  sanity,  with  its  fruits,  is  expressed,  is 
salvation;  that  is,  health,  unity,  wholeness,  with 
all  manhood  powers  and  endowments  in  thorough 
working  order.  Such  salvation  is  not  merely  a 
religious  affair;  it  is  also  sound  sense  developed 
to  its  practical  height. 

Now  this  seems,  perhaps,  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world.  The  first  thing  that  any  man 
would  interrogate,  one  would  imagine,  would 
be  common  sense  for  common  things,  if  he  were 

1  Morley,  Studies  in  Literature,  p.  57. 
92 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

setting  up  for  a  sage.  It  is  by  no  means  clear, 
however,  that  this  is  the  way  men  actually  do 
take.  Nay,  something  quite  like  the  opposite  seems 
rather  to  have  prevailed.  Disciplined  common 
sense  seems  to  be  a  thing  that  men  learn  late,  just 
as  they  learn  to  write  prose  long  after  they  have 
luxuriated  in  poetry.  We  can  see  this  by  looking 
at  the  Hebrew  sages'  neighbors  on  either  hand. 
The  Egyptian  wise  men  who  counselled  King 
Pharaoh  were  sorcerers  and  enchanters;  men  who 
pried  into  the  exceptional  and  marvellous,  into  the 
freaks  and  portents  of  occult  nature,  not  into  the 
common  things  of  life.  The  wise  men  who  came 
from  the  East  to  Bethlehem  were  astrologers  and 
magicians,  men  who  sought  the  inner  meaning 
of  things  in  the  stars;  they  were  looking  for  wis- 
dom away  off  somewhere,  not  right  here,  not  in 
the  prosaic  experiences  of  the  town  and  the  farm 
and  the  household.  We  will  recall  how  Browning 
has  portrayed  this  tendency  to  go  far  afield  for 
wisdom,  in  his  Paracelsus;  who  doubtless  repre- 
sents the  awakened  spirit  of  the  New  Learning 
just  at  its  keenest,  when,  roused  from  the  long 
torpor  of  scholasticism,  it  had  become  aware  of  an 
unexplored  wealth  of  fact  and  truth  before  it. 
This  awakened  spirit,  it  would  seem,  was  not 
unlike  that  of  the  young  Solomon  and  the  sages 

93 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

of  his  time.  Paracelsus,  too,  was  sick  of  the  stupid 
and  vapid  old  erudition,  and  fired  with  the  splen- 
dor of  a  new  vision.  He  gathered  thus  into  an 
ardent  soul  the  movement  of  an  age.  But  in  order 
to  achieve  his  ideal  of  wisdom,  he  thought  he  must 
leave  his  native  haunts  and  wander  to  all  the 
corners  of  the  earth,  must  traverse  seas  and  soli- 
tudes, ruined  cities  and  savage  lands,  must  delve 
into  black  arts  and  white,  the  secret  and  the  sub- 
lime; while  all  the  time  he  loathed  the  crowds 
that  thronged  his  lecture-room,  and  had  a  con- 
tempt for  common  plodding  human  nature.  The 
simple,  healthy  life  of  ordinary  men  and  their 
home  interests  were  too  vulgar,  too  colorless. 
Yes,  after  all,  common  sense,  sense  for  the  every- 
day values  of  life,  is  a  plant  of  rare  and  late  growth. 
And  if  the  Hebrew  sages,  with  the  Egyptian 
sorcery  on  the  one  side  and  the  Chaldean  magic 
on  the  other,  were  somehow  guided  into  an  all- 
men's  thoroughfare  of  wisdom,  available  for  high- 
est and  humblest  alike,  I  dare  to  call  it  divinely 
ordered,  providential.  Perhaps  it  was  that  univer- 
sal quality  of  it  which  made  the  Hebrew  Wisdom 
pass  into  the  ages  as  a  vital  element  of  manhood 
building,  while  Egyptian  sorcery  and  Chaldean 
magic,  though  so  much  more  showy  and  preten- 
tious, are  as  dead  as  are  those  civilizations  them- 

94 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

selves.  The  literature  that  this  wisdom  of  common 
sense  called  forth  has  in  fact  builded  better  than 
it  knew;  it  is  an  integral  strand  of  revelation, 
having  the  quality  not  of  a  mystic  portent  nor  of 
something  esoteric  and  remote,  but  of  a  familiar 
and  wholesome  Bible. 

For  the  straight  wisdom,  then,  which  we  are 
now  to  consider,  we  do  not  have  to  go  far  afield; 
it  is  an  asset  of  life  coined,  so  to  say,  out  of  the 
ore  that  lies  mixed  with  the  soil  of  every  hillside. 
The  early  sages  picked  up  their  wisdom  by  inter- 
rogating the  first  and  largest  fact  of  experience 
that  offered;  went  to  work  at  life  among  an  essen- 
tially religious  people  just  as  Poor  Richard  did 
among  farmers  and  artisans,  talking  in  terms  of 
weather  and  crops  and  working  implements  and 
eating  and  drinking.  We  will  not  quarrel  with 
Mr.  Morley  for  calling  the  truths  which  go  to 
make  up  such  wisdom  unsystematic;  and  of  course 
we  know  what  he  means  when  he  says  that  truths 
of  this  nature  were  presented  "without  logical 
method,  technical  phraseology,  or  any  of  the  pa- 
rade of  the  schools."  This  in  fact  is  an  essential 
element  in  the  glory  of  Hebrew  Wisdom;  it  was 
not  academic.  It  went  down  to  the  people's  heart, 
the  people's  ways,  the  common  consciousness  that 
expresses  itself  in  proverbs.  And  each  of  these 

95 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

proverbs  contained  its  fitting  measure  of  wisdom. 
Our  modern  idea  is  that  consciousness  does  not 
reside  in  some  one  part  of  the  body,  like  the  brain 
or  the  pineal  gland,  but  that  each  part,  however 
small  or  remote,  has  consciousness  enough  to 
fulfil  its  functions.  Watch,  for  instance  the  leuco- 
cytes, the  white  corpuscles  of  the  blood,  at  their 
marvellous  work  of  repairing  wounds  and  killing 
foreign  microbes,  and  they  seem  for  all  the  world 
like  a  self-directed  and  finely  organized  army; 
with  every  individual  aware  of  its  duty,  the 
same  duty  of  repairing  waste  and  fighting  evil 
which  on  its  larger  scale  animates  the  whole 
man.  So  the  Hebrew  mashal,  in  its  beginning, 
had  enough  wisdom  for  its  particular  case,  and  so 
built  up  from  individual  cases  to  a  community  of 
wisdom.  The  body  of  Wisdom  it  thus  developed 
is  analogous  to  the  consciousness  of  a  crowd,  as 
distinguished  from  the  consciousness  of  an  indi- 
vidual; it  is  a  body  of  doctrine  that  takes  a  part 
of  its  character  from  the  fact  that  every  constitu- 
ent element  is  in  its  place,  doing  its  nicely  adjusted 
work. 

But  if  we  should  draw  from  this  the  conclusion 
that  its  constituent  truths  or  underlying  principles 
remained  unsystematic;  that  there  was  no  vital- 
izing logical  method  deep-laid  beneath  it,  we 

96 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

should  need  to  reopen  the  question.  In  fact,  here 
is  where  we  must  take  into  account  that  growth, 
that  evolution,  which  I  have  mentioned  as  char- 
acterizing the  Hebrew  body  of  Wisdom.  At  its 
beginning,  in  the  sunshine  of  King  Solomon's 
brilliant  court,  it  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  men  of  letters  —  for  so  we  may  truly 
call  them;  —  and  these  at  once  impressed  upon 
its  utterances  the  artistic  stamp.  The  Proverbs  of 
Solomon,  as  I  have  already  remarked,  were  not 
rough-hewn,  run-wild  maxims  from  the  mouth 
of  the  common  folk.  Natural  and  homely  as  they 
are,  they  bear  the  marks  of  skill,  of  refined  shap- 
ing, of  literary  artistry.  Now  this  artistry  means 
a  great  deal  more  than  juggling  with  words  and 
similitudes  and  contrasts.  Even  if  it  begins  with 
such  loud  and  salient  devices,  it  grows  to  more 
even  under  our  eyes.  For  its  inspiring  impulse  is 
not  the  workmanship  but  the  truth.  And  there 
must  go  to  the  shaping  of  it  a  grasp  of  mind,  a 
generalizing  aptitude,  an  ability  to  draw  many 
experiences  into  one  lesson,  which  is  in  its  nature 
logical,  and  which  cannot  long  continue  unsyste- 
matic. A  system,  a  unitary  concept,  is  growing  up 
within  it  all  the  while,  and  getting  ready  to  declare 
itself.  So  when  we  take  up  this  miscellany  which 
we  call  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  and  inquire  if  there 

97 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

is  any  one  truth  that  it  all  stands  for,  we  find  that 
even  in  the  course  of  its  growth  it  has  discovered 
a  beginning,  a  root,  as  Jesus  Sirach  calls  it,  out 
of  which  a  whole  organism  springs ;  and  that  it 
rounds  up  into  a  comprehensive  principle  which 
thenceforth  is  assumed  and  appealed  to  as  an 
established  thing,  the  unit  of  a  philosophy  of  life. 


To  begin  with,  however,  the  Book  of  Proverbs 
makes  no  claim  on  system  or  unity.  It  is  merely 
a  collection,  or  rather  several  collections,  of  wise 
pronouncements  on  life,  in  detached  maxim  form. 
This  is  evident,  when  we  come  to  analyze  it,  as 
we  have  plain  data  for  doing,  into  the  several 
sections  of  which  it  is  made  up.  For  the  book, 
as  it  lies  before  us,  does  not,  like  our  modern 
books,  embody  a  planned  and  foreseen  line  of 
thought,  or  what  we  call  a  theme.  Rather,  it 
discovers  its  theme,  as  it  were,  after  a  great  deal 
of  material  has  been  compiled;  it  discovers  that 
its  miscellany  of  scattered  counsels  have  a  com- 
mon suffusion  and  direction,  to  which,  in  the  end, 
may  be  given  the  unitary  term  Wisdom.  This 
discovery,  made  by  a  later  compiler  and  editor, 
is  indicated  in  the  first,  which  is  the  youngest, 
part  of  the  book;  and  furnishes  thus  a  clue  by 

98 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

which  readers  may  now  go  through  the  collection 
intelligently,  realizing,  as  the  very  earliest  proverb 
readers  did  not,  that  the  book  means  not  only 
many  things  but  one  thing. 

"The  Proverbs  of  Solomon,  the  son  of  David, 
king  of  Israel:  "  thus,  at  the  beginning,  is  headed 
this  anthology  of  mashal  literature;  a  title  that 
promises  merely  miscellaneous  counsels  on  life,  or 
rather  on  living;  counsels  to  be  taken  as  liked 
or  needed,  and  pondered  one  at  a  time.  It  is  a 
storehouse  wherein,  according  to  the  occasion, 
one  may  get  the  aphorism  he  wants.  Let  us  run 
over  the  collection  a  little. 

"The  only  specimen  of  Edmund  Burke,"  some 
one  once  said  of  the  great  English  statesman, 
"  is  all  he  wrote."  One  is  obliged  to  confess  much 
the  same  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs.  Its  range  of 
wise  maxims  is  so  opulent  and  kaleidoscopic  that 
it  is  hopeless,  in  a  sketch  like  this,  to  pick  out  a 
verse,  or  a  few  verses,  from  which  the  drift  of  the 
whole  may  be  gathered.  A  better  way  to  get  at 
this  drift,  perhaps,  will  be  to  run  over  what  sur- 
veyors call  the  lay-out  of  the  book,  as  a  basis 
for  the  focalization,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  which  the 
sages  themselves  make,  as  they  come  gradually 
to  recognize  the  large  significance  of  the  whole 
collection. 

99 


For  this  purpose,  in  order  that  we  may  better 
understand  how  the  book  probably  grew,  let  us 
leave  the  first  nine  chapters,  as  a  section  to  be 
returned  to  later,  and  begin  with  the  tenth; 
where,  it  is  commonly  thought,  begins  the  oldest 
portion  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 

At  the  head  of  this  tenth  chapter  stands  a 
repeated  title:  "The  Proverbs  of  Solomon  ;  "  and 
in  the  old  King  James  Version,  which  under- 
takes to  give  the  contents  of  all  the  chapters  of 
Scripture,  is  put  here  the  note:  "From  this  chap- 
ter to  the  five  and  twentieth  are  sundry  obser- 
vations of  morall  vertues,  and  their  contrary 
vices,"  —  the  only  note  of  contents  for  all  the 
indicated  chapters.  This  note  does  not,  however, 
quite  accurately  indicate  the  farther  boundary  of 
the  section.  Rather,  these  "sundry  observations" 
extend  to  the  sixteenth  verse  of  the  twenty-second 
chapter:  three  hundred  and  seventy-five  proverbs 
in  all,  clearly  marked  off  by  their  form  from  the 
rest  of  the  book.  They  are  all  couplet-proverbs, 
antithetic  or  parallelistic,  exhibiting  thus  the  ma- 
shal  or  aphorism  in  its  most  condensed  and,  so 
to  say,  classic  moulding. 

In  one  rather  interesting  way  the  section  an- 
swers to  the  order  an  explorer  might  supposably 
take  in  making  a  kind  of  voyage  of  spiritual  dis- 

100 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

covery.  To  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  chapter 
there  is  a  great  predominance  of  antithesis;  as  if 
the  first  impulse  of  the  sages  were  to  quarry  out  of 
life  the  great  eternal  contrasts  of  good  and  evil, 
wisdom  and  folly,  in  uncompromising  distinctions 
that  need  no  shading  down  or  explaining.  Then 
from  that  point  on  there  is  an  equally  great  pre- 
dominance of  proverbs  wherein  the  second  line 
enlarges  upon  the  idea  of  the  first,  by  way  of  repe- 
tition or  elucidation  or  consequence;  as  if  it  were 
felt  that  truth  is  not  always  of  that  trenchant 
absolute  nature  which  needs  only  strong  assertion 
and  distinction,  but  rather  that  some  aspects  of 
truth  need  to  be  left  a  little  more  flexible,  more 
open  to  new  involvements.  I  am  not  trying  by 
these  remarks  to  reduce  this  section  of  Proverbs 
to  a  plan;  but  as  we  run  the  collection  over,  the 
large  fact  emerges  that  as  the  sages,  beginning 
thus  on  common  ground  with  their  readers,  pushed 
their  researches  onward  toward  a  workable  phi- 
losophy, the  order  into  which  their  mashals  fell 
was  on  the  whole  the  natural  order  of  an  investi- 
gation. If  we  are  setting  forth  a  theme,  the  essen- 
tial steps  are:  — 

1.  Discrimination;    and  this  leads  here  to  the 
initial  predominance  of  the  antithetic  mashal. 

2.  Parallelism,  or  putting  a  thing  in  interpreta- 

101 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

tive  terms;  which  leads  to  a  next  step,  the  synony- 
mous or  repetitionary  mashal. 

3.  Analogy,  or  imaging  what  the  thing  is  like; 
which,  a  refining  stage,  leads  to  the  simile  ma- 
shal. 

4.  Comparison,  to  literal  thought  what  simile 
is  to  figurative;  which  leads  to  the  comparative, 
or  "Better  than"  style  of  mashal. 

All  these,  which  correspond  fairly  to  the  order 
of  this  section,  are  not  factitious,  but  natural 
literary  processes,  capable,  however,  of  refinement 
as  the  more  rudimental  thoughts  are  thought  up, 
and  the  author  has  to  go  farther  afield,  as  in  later 
sections  we  see  he  does. 

With  the  seventeenth  verse  of  the  twenty-sec- 
ond chapter  begins  another  collection  of  proverbs. 
This  we  know  because  another  form  of  mashal 
begins  here  to  prevail.  Instead  of  the  pithy,  con- 
densed couplet  we  come  upon  stanzas  of  four  and 
sometimes  six  lines,  with  a  couplet  only  here  and 
there  intercalated.  Besides  this,  the  collection  is 
introduced  by  a  preface  of  its  own,  a  hortatory 
address  to  the  reader,  in  which  is  intimated  that 
not  Solomon,  but  the  guild  of  sages  are  the  authors 
of  what  succeeds.  "  Incline  thine  ear,  and  hear  the 
words  of  the  wise,  and  apply  thine  heart  unto  my 
knowledge.  For  it  is  a  pleasant  thing  if  thou  keep 

102 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

them  within  thee,  if  they  be  established  together 
upon  thy  lips.  That  thy  trust  may  be  in  the  Lord, 
I  have  made  them  known  to  thee  this  day,  even 
to  thee.  Have  not  I  written  unto  thee  excellent 
things  of  counsels  and  knowledge ;  to  make  thee 
know  the  certainty  of  the  words  of  truth,  that  thou 
mayest  carry  back  words  of  truth  to  them  that 
send  thee?"  l 

This  preface,  which  is  quite  in  the  tone  of 
Deuteronomy,  seems  to  suggest  that  by  the  time 
it  was  written,  the  sages  had  become  quite  an 
honored  and  authoritative  order,  who  not  only 
gave  but  sent  counsels;  as  a  teacher  sends  in- 
formation to  parents  and  guardians,  or  as  a 
philosopher  gives  wise  decisions  to  delegations  of 
inquirers.  And  the  character  of  the  collection, 
which  extends  to  the  twenty-second  verse  of  the 
twenty-fourth  chapter,  corresponds  not  inaptly 
with  this  idea  of  its  publication;  it  is  a  graceful 
and  quite  complete  little  manual  of  conduct, 
especially  regarding  what  may  be  called  secondary 
duties  of  life  and  manners,  duties  relating  to  surety- 
ship, gluttony,  unchastity,  intemperance,  enmi- 
ties, and  the  like. 

Immediately  succeeding  this  section  we  come 
upon  a  further  group  of  mashals,  in  the  same 

1  Proverbs  xxii,  17-21. 
103 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

expanded  form,  a  kind  of  postscript,  headed  by 
the  words,  "These  also  are  sayings  of  the  wise;"  * 
which  postscript  fills  out  the  twenty-fourth  chapter. 
It  is  in  this  postscript  that  we  find  the  song  about 
The  Field  of  the  Slothful,  already  mentioned  as 
containing  the  refrain  used  again  in  the  Sluggard 
song  in  the  later  written  sixth  chapter. 

With  the  twenty-fifth  chapter  begins  a  new  and 
one  of  the  longer  collections,  headed,  "These 
also  are  proverbs  of  Solomon,  which  the  men  of 
Hezekiah  king  of  Judah  copied  out."  Hezekiah 
came  to  the  throne  of  Judah  more  than  two 
hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Solomon;  so  this 
title  testifies  to  the  editor's  belief  not  only  that 
the  order  of  court  sages  had  survived  all  this  time, 
but  that  there  was  a  store  of  Solomonic  literature 
which  had  thus  long  awaited  publication.  The 
collection  contains  something  like  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  proverbs,  of  various  lengths,  though  the 
couplet  predominates;  reverting  thus,  especially 
toward  the  end,  to  the  older  Solomonic  type.  One 
marked  characteristic  of  the  early  part  of  this 
collection  is  the  tendency  to  group  proverbs  of 
like  subjects  together,  forming  clusters  of  sayings 
about  some  one  comprehensive  topic;  thus  there 
are  clusters  on  The  King,  on  The  Sluggard,  on 

1  Proverbs  xxiv,  23. 
104 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

Fools,  on  Social  Pests.  Later,  however,  the  mis- 
cellany character  regains  ground.  To  the  end  of 
the  twenty-seventh  chapter  a  new  type  of  mashal 
comes  decidedly  into  predominance,  the  simile, 
drawing  spiritual  analogies  from  the  world  of 
sense  and  sight.  After  that  the  oldest  form,  the 
contrast,  recrudescent  like  that  of  the  simile, 
comes  again  to  predominate;  but  with  a  differ- 
ence from  those  earliest  contrasts.  The  strain  of 
ideas  is  more  subtle  and  refined,  revealing  less 
salient  truths  and  more  remote  associations  of 
ideas;  as  if  the  writer  had  used  up  the  big  knock- 
down contrasts  of  wisdom  and  folly,  and  were 
concerned  to  note  how,  in  things  for  the  most 
part  alike,  a  sharp  point  of  antithesis  may  be 
found,  just  as  in  its  counterpart,  the  simile,  we 
are  interested  to  see  how  things  very  different 
from  each  other  may  reveal  some  point  wherein 
they  are  exquisitely  alike.  Thus  this  Hezekian 
collection,  on  the  whole,  may  be  regarded  as  the 
monument  of  a  sharpened  penetrative  thinking, 
both  in  the  sense  of  literary  form  and  of  the 
subtler  values  of  life. 

Following  this  Hezekian  collection,  and  reading 
like  a  kind  of  appendix  to  the  Book  of  Proverbs, 
are  three  shorter  collections :  the  Words  of  Agur 
the  son  of  Jakeh,  making  up  the  thirtieth  chapter; 

105 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

the  Words  of  King  Lemuel,  comprised  in  the  first 
nine  verses  of  the  thirty-first  chapter;  and  finally, 
an  acrostic  poem,  anonymous,  twenty-two  couplets 
long,  that  is,  a  couplet  for  each  letter  of  the  He- 
brew alphabet,  on  The  Virtuous  Woman.  There 
is  something  a  little  odd  and  unusual  in  all  of 
these.  This  last  manner  of  writing,  the  acrostic, 
is  evidently  a  highly  artificial  form  of  verse;  but  so 
also,  in  another  way,  is  the  style  of  Agur,  which 
expresses  itself  mostly  by  means  of  the  so-called 
numerical  proverbs,  such  as  were  described  in 
the  former  chapter,  a  kind  of  catalogue  way  of 
writing,  like :  — 

"  There  are  three  things  that  are  never  satisfied; 
Yea,  four  things  say  not,  It  is  enough."  l 

Even  in  his  famous  prayer  Agur  is  inclined  to 
make  things  plain  to  the  Lord  by  telling  off 
numerically  the  things  he  wants.  A  further 
thing  worthy  of  note  is,  that  both  the  words  of 
Agur  and  the  words  of  King  Lemuel  are  called 
oracles,  or  burdens,  the  word  used  distinctively  of 
a  prophet's  dictum.  It  is  hard  to  say  why;  I  am 
inclined  to  think,  however,  that  it  was  because 
when  these  words  were  published,  which  was 
undoubtedly  quite  late  in  the  evolution  of  Wisdom, 
the  word  of  the  sage  had  come  to  be  valued  as 

1  Proverbs  xxx,  15. 

106 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

coordinate  in  real  authority  with  the  pronounce- 
ment of  prophets  and  priests,  and  so  to  merit  the 
same  mystic  name.  If  so,  we  have  here  a  very 
suggestive  indication  of  what  Wisdom  grew  to, 
in  national  and  general  esteem  :  it  was  felt  to 
be  authoritative,  oracular,  a  message  from  the 
divine. 

There  are  things  in  the  thought  of  Agur  which 
we  must  bring  up  again;  here  for  the  present, 
however,  we  leave  him,  and  with  him  the  outline 
description  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 

Our  little  excursion  among  the  landmarks  of 
the  book  has  seemed  to  reveal  the  notes  of  a  kind 
of  voyage  of  discovery  through  life,  carried  on  for 
centuries,  and  depositing  its  results  as  they  came, 
in  successive  strata.  By  way  of  summary  here  we 
can  stay  for  only  one  remark.  The  Hebrew  sage 
thought  out  his  wisdom  in  particulars,  in  concrete 
cases;  drawing  it  immediately  from  the  experi- 
ence, or  the  emergency,  or  the  trait  of  character 
right  at  hand.  He  wrote,  as  Wordsworth  enjoins 
on  the  poet,  with  his  eye  on  the  object:  it  was 
not  what  he  had  to  imagine,  or  to  speculate  on,  or 
to  dig  for  in  some  out-of-the-way  place,  but  what 
he  saw  as  he  sat  in  the  market-place  and  the  city 
gate.  This  looks  like  a  crude,  rule-of-thumb,  Poor 
Richard  way  of  going  at  life;  it  dons  no  academic 

107 


'  HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

robes,  has  none  of  the  parades  and  plaudits  of 
a  philosophy.  But  just  so,  when  we  think  of  it,  a 
man  of  science  approaches  his  department  of 
knowledge ;  he  puts  on  his  apron  and  buries 
himself  in  his  laboratory,  and  observes  and 
experiments,  until  the  useful  secret  is  charmed 
from  nature.  The  present-day  scientific  temper 
and  sense  for  fact  is  illustrating  to  us  all  the 
while  what  the  Hebrew  sages'  attitude  toward  life 
was  like.  It  was  keyed  to  the  same  scale. 

And  out  of  it  all,  to  a  greater  degree  than  he 
was  aware,  to  a  result  which  continually  suggests 
a  Higher  Wisdom  working  with  him  in  the  night, 
he  was  laying  the  foundation  of  a  philosophy 
in  personality,  in  character.  Character,  we  may 
say,  expressed  alike  in  the  ideas  of  his  brain 
and  in  the  tempers  and  passions  of  his  soul, — 
that  is,  in  full-orbed  literary  intensity,  —  was  the 
focus  in  which  his  Wisdom  united  and  centred. 
Respect  for  the  king  and  for  law,  honor  for  the 
parent  and  teacher  and  gray  head,  comradeship 
for  the  thrifty  and  prosperous,  admiration  for  the 
shrewd  and  subtle,  tender  regard  for  the  poor  and 
oppressed ;  all  these  wholesome  enthusiasms  co- 
existed inseparably  with  sarcasm  for  fools,  scorn 
for  scorners,  contempt  for  sluggards,  disgust  for 
gluttons  and  drunkards,  abhorrence  for  impure  and 
1 08 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

unchaste,  disdain  for  talebearers  and  backbiters. 
And  gradually  these  miscellaneous  traits  coalesced 
on  each  side  into  one  inclusive  trait :  love  of  right- 
eousness on  the  one  hand,  abhorrence  of  wicked- 
ness on  the  other ;  or  not  to  be  an  echo  of  the 
church,  a  positive  attitude  toward  wisdom  and 
folly,  which  in  the  secular  dialect  are  synonyms 
of  these.  To  be  industrious  and  open-minded 
and  steady  and  temperate  and  tactful  in  speech 
was  just  in  so  many  ways  to  be  wise,  that  is,  to 
put  your  soul  to  good  use  for  practical  and  gainful 
ends.  To  be  lazy  and  froward  and  gluttonous  and 
clamorous  and  headstrong  was  to  be  just  so  many 
kinds  of  a  fool.  Thus,  then,  the  lines  are  drawing 
together  for  a  unitary  structure  of  straight  wisdom. 
Let  us  follow  them. 

ii 

For  this  unifying  purpose  we  are  brought  back 
to  the  opening  section  of  the  book,  the  first  nine 
chapters,  the  consideration  of  which  was  post- 
poned. This  opening  section  seems  to  be  the  work 
of  the  editor  who  brought  the  whole  collection 
together,  with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  last 
two  chapters,  which,  as  I  have  noted,  read  like 
an  appendix;  and  he  has  brought  to  his  compiling 
a  genius  and  enthusiasm,  a  creative  and  organ- 

109 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

izing  spirit,  which  make  his  section  the  glory  of 
the  book. 

As  we  put  these  first  nine  chapters  alongside 
the  rest  of  the  book,  the  impression  grows  upon 
us  that  the  editor  has  designed  it  not  as  merely 
a  preliminary  treatise  of  his  own,  or  as  a  kind  of 
vestibule,  but  as  a  summary  and  synopsis.  He 
is  thinking  over  the  whole  Wisdom  field  before 

o 

him,  and  in  his  fervid  Hebrew  way  coordinating 
its  scattered  elements.  And  the  groundwork  he 
thus  lays  proves  to  be  not  merely  the  foundation 
of  this  Book  of  Proverbs;  it  is  the  foundation  of 
the  whole  Wisdom  literature,  a  basis  of  reference, 
a  court  of  appeal,  and  in  some  ways  a  point  of 
departure  for  the  sages  who  go  on  to  explore  the 
field  of  Wisdom  further.  It  lays  down  a  nucleus 
principle  that  they  all,  to  their  latest  utterances, 
recognize;  and  none  of  them  gainsay  it. 

The  fact,  already  noted,  that  the  Hebrew  Wis- 
dom, as  distinguished  from  law  and  prophecy, 
was  eminently  individual,  comes  here  at  the  outset 
to  light;  making  us  think  that  these  counsels  of  the 
sages  were  probably  the  chief  means  by  which 
the  sense  of  individualism  came  to  expression  in 
the  nation.  The  feeling  that  this  was  an  important 
element  in  its  mission  is  indicated,  not  inaptly, 
by  the  fact  that  as  soon  as  the  Proverb  book  is 
no 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

prefaced  and  launched,  the  first  counsel  given  to 
the  young  man  is,  not  to  go  heedlessly  with  the 
crowd,  but  to  have  his  own  mind  and  his  own 
cherished  principle  of  conduct. 

As  a  whole,  this  section  relates  itself  to  the  rest 
of  the  book  by  resolving  its  lessons  along  various 
lines  into  one  great  antithetic  mashal,  which  rises 
in  beauty  and  definition  until  it  stands  before  us 
in  the  glory  of  personal  portrayal  and  splendor. 
Beginning  with  the  temptations  that  assail  the 
young  and  inexperienced,  temptations  to  the  law- 
less escapades  of  boon  companions,  to  luxurious 
laziness,  to  perversity  and  rash  presumption,  and 
above  all  to  the  wiles  of  the  strange  woman, 
it  goes  on  through  the  inviting  paths  of  instruc- 
tion and  genial  discipline,  gradually  visualizing, 
so  to  say,  its  objects  of  ideal  and  abhorrence ; 
until  at  the  end,  as  in  a  vista,  we  see  before  us 
two  beings  calling  the  inexperienced  to  a  kind 
of  Choice  of  Hercules:  Madam  Folly,  leering 
through  her  lattice  or  subtly  enticing  the  simple 
to  her  stolen  pleasures;  and  Our  Lady  Wisdom, 
queenly  and  gracious,  building  her  house  and 
hewing  her  seven  pillars,  calling  the  sons  of  men 
not  like  a  sovereign  to  fear  and  subjection,  but  as 
Athene  does  Paris  in  Tennyson's  poem,  to  their 
own  manhood,  to  that  "  self-reverence,  self-know- 

iii 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

ledge,  self-control,"  which  alone  can  "lead  life 
to  sovereign  power."  Through  the  charm  of  the 
poetic  rhythm  and  imagery  we  are  sweetly  made 
to  feel  the  generous  condescension,  the  yearning 
love  of  Wisdom,  as  thus  she  shuns  not,  for  love 
and  manhood's  sake,  to  enter  into  competition 
with  so  loathly  a  rival,  alluring  men  to  the  large, 
free  blessedness  of  life,  as  the  other  entices  to  se- 
cret and  nameless  evils,  if  by  all  means  she  might 
save  men  from  the  paths  of  death  and  shame. 
It  is  a  majestic,  engaging  picture. 

As  to  the  make-up  of  the  section,  we  must  note 
first  of  all  the  Preface,  which  sets  forth  the  grand 
object  of  the  body  of  counsel,  and  above  all  its 
educative  value. 

"To  know  wisdom  and  instruction; 

To  discern  the  words  of  understanding; 

To  receive  instruction  in  wise  dealing, 

In  righteousness  and  justice  and  equity; 

To  give  prudence  to  the  simple, 

To  the  young  man  knowledge  and  discretion: 

That  the  wise  man  may  hear,  and  increase  in  learning; 

And  that  the  man  of  understanding  may  attain  unto  sound 

counsels: 

To  understand  a  proverb,  and  a  figure; 
The  words  of  the  wise,  and  their  dark  sayings."  l 

Let  us  dwell  a  little  on  this  masterly  preface. 
It  begins,  we  note,  quite  simply,  with  knowing 

1  Proverbs  i,  2-6  (American  revision). 
112 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

things,  straight  knowledge.  "To  know  wisdom 
and  instruction."  The  Hebrew  sage  set  great 
store  by  this.  The  spirit  that  animated  him  was 
just  the  spirit  that  dwells  in  the  scientific  man  of 
to-day:  the  hunger  to  find  out  the  secret  oflife  and 
the  world  for  himself,  by  putting  fact  and  fact,  ex- 
perience and  experience,  phenomenon  and  pheno- 
menon together.  His  impulsion  to  this  was  doubt- 
less the  keener  by  reaction;  it  was  putting  in 
healthy  motion  a  current  of  being  that  had  been 
repressed.  We  all  know  the  difference  between 
knowing  a  thing  and  being  told  it;  it  is  the  differ- 
ence between  first-hand  fact  and  shadowy  theory. 
The  Hebrew  had  plenty  of  ways  of  being  told 
things ;  the  whole  atmosphere  of  his  life  was 
charged  with  law,  prescription,  divine  sanction 
and  threatening.  The  priest  told  him  how  to 
worship  and  what  rules  of  conduct  to  observe;  the 
prophet  thundered  at  him  his  warnings,  not  in 
the  persuasive  reasonableness  of  counsel,  but  in  the 
stern  absoluteness  of  command.  To  know  a  thing, 
on  the  other  hand,  know  it  from  an  inner  recog- 
nition and  conviction,  and  not  merely  to  take 
it  on  another's  say-so :  this  opened  a  new  and 
hitherto  well-nigh  starved  bent  of  nature,  which 
wreaked  itself  on  a  beckoning  new  realm  ;  it  was 
like  the  soul-hunger  ascribed  to  Ulysses,  that 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

"gray  spirit  yearning  in  desire 
To  follow  knowledge  like  a  sinking  star, 
Beyond  the  utmost  bound  of  human  thought."  ' 

A  later  sage,  Koheleth,  has  represented  this 
hunger  for  knowledge  almost  as  a  disease:  "I 
gave  my  heart,"  he  says,  "to  explore  and  survey 
by  wisdom  concerning  all  that  is  wrought  under 
the  heavens;  this,  a  sad  toil,  hath  God  given  to 
the  sons  of  men  to  toil  therewith." 2 

But  to  this  yearning  to  know,  the  Hebrew 
sages  added  a  tempering  and  proportioning  ele- 
ment: it  was  an  ideal  not  to  be  filled  and  clogged 
with  information,  but  —  to  be  wise.  What  was 
this  element,  this  coefficient  which,  being  super- 
added  to  knowledge,  transfigured  and  quickened 
it  to  wisdom  ? 

I  think  that  in  its  central  essence  —  and  in 
saying  this  I  reserve  another  element,  no  less 
truly  essential,  which  we  must  needs  look  at 
later  —  it  was  just  knowledge  of  the  right  and 
reasonable  things,  the  things  which,  laying  hold 
on  the  active  principles  of  life,  make  knowledge 
also  a  vigorous  spiritual  adjustment,  and  not  the 
mere  bovine  recognition  of  the  brain.  An  old 
Latin  prayer,  quoted  by  Matthew  Arnold,  puts 
it  thus:  "Da  miki,  Domine,  scire  quod  sciendum 

1  Tennyson,  Ulysses.  »  Ecclesiastes  i,  13. 

114 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

est "  — "  Grant  that  the  knowledge  I  get  may 
be  the  knowledge  which  is  worth  having!'"  and 
then  he  goes  on  to  say:  "The  spirit  of  that  prayer 
ought  to  rule  our  education.  How  little  it  does  rule 
it,  every  discerning  man  will  acknowledge.  Life  is 
short,  and  our  faculties  of  attention  and  of  recol- 
lection are  limited;  in  education  we  proceed  as  if 
our  life  were  endless,  and  our  powers  of  attention 
and  recollection  inexhaustible.  We  have  not  time 
or  strength  to  deal  with  half  of  the  matters  which 
are  thrown  upon  our  minds,  they  prove  a  useless 
load  to  us."  1 

We  of  modern  days  have  reached  the  point, 
and  not  unreasonably,  where  we  set  great  value 
on  every  smallest  discovery  of  science,  because  no 
one  knows  what  fact  of  nature,  however  remote 
and  hidden,  may  be  translated  into  some  far- 
reaching  application :  a  labor-saving  appliance, 
or  a  specific  for  disease,  or  a  banisher  of  filths 
and  poisons.  It  is  in  the  eventual  use  of  it  that 
the  value  of  our  researches  culminates.  This,  just 
this,  was  the  Hebrew  sage's  fundamental  con- 
viction. The  knowledge  he  sought  was  such  as 
translated  directly  into  life;  that  was  what  made 
it  the  knowledge  worth  having.  Accordingly,  this 
preface  names  over  a  good  many  of  these  wisdom- 

1  Arnold,  Preface  to  an  edition  of  Johnson's  Lives  oj  the  Poets. 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

bearing  aspects  of  knowledge:  understanding,  wise 
dealing,  righteousness,  justice,  equity,  prudence, 
subtlety,  discretion,  —  things  all  which  are  not 
a  mere  inert  lading  of  the  brain,  but  a  weapon 
and  working-tool  in  the  hand,  and  a  power  in  the 
heart  to  set  energy  and  will  into  fruitful  relation 
with  fellow  man  and  the  world.  It  was  a  noble 
contribution,  in  those  far-off  days,  to  the  educa- 
tional furnishing  of  manhood. 

The  preface  next  goes  on  to  specify  the  classes 
for  whom  the  book's  counsels  are  fitly  designed, 
and  the  particular  aspects  of  Wisdom  that  will 
suit  each  class.  Three  such  are  mentioned. 

There  is  first  the  simple,  or  as  we  may  better 
call  them,  persons  of  undeveloped  mind;  not  bad 
nor  foolish,  but  just  crude  and  unripe.  And  what 
they  need  to  get  from  these  counsels  is  what 
the  English  version  calls  subtlety,  and  the  Ameri- 
can revised,  prudence.  In  other  words,  into  their 
vealy,  unbaked,  unploughed  nature  they  need  first 
of  all  to  get  some  discrimination,  some  sharpness 
of  distinction,  some  formed  ideal.  Like  young 
infants,  who  need  to  learn  that  the  moon  is  farther 
off  than  the  candle,  that  bright  things  may  burn 
and  sweet  things  may  poison,  so  in  moral  matters 
these  undeveloped  minds  need  to  get  a  sense  of 
relative  values  and  primary  colors  of  good  and 
116 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

evil.  Their  way  in  life  must  not  be  an  accident, 
but  so  prudently  ordered  that  untried  experiences, 
of  pleasure  or  pain,  will  not  sweep  them  out  of 
their  orbit,  but  discipline  and  chasten  them.  It 
is  to  the  simple  that  Our  Lady  Wisdom  calls,  in 
the  eighth  and  ninth  chapters,  bidding  them  leave 
off  their  heedless  vegetative  existence  and  begin 
to  think  and  live.  It  is  to  the  simple  also  that  the 
strange  woman,  the  loathly  counterfeit  of  Wisdom, 
calls,  and  the  simpleton  goes  after  her  like  an  ox 
to  the  slaughter.  The  strange  woman  herself,  too, 
is  called  simple,1  a  mere  wisp  of  the  crude  animal 
nature,  of  which  a  man  ought  to  be  ashamed 
to  be  in  the  evil  power. 

Then,  secondly,  there  is  the  young  man,  the 
man  in  the  vigor  and  splendid  morning  of  life; 
and  what  he  may  get  from  these  counsels  is 
knowledge  and  discretion,  just  the  endowments 
that  it  is  in  him  to  seek  and  profit  by.  He  has 
the  magnificent  impulse  and  the  daring;  his  dan- 
ger is,  venturing  on  too  little  knowledge,  or  being 
headstrong  and  rash.  And  here  it  is  that  these 
wise  counsels  meet  him.  "I  have  written  unto 
you,  young  men,"  says  the  aged  St.  John,  "be- 
cause ye  are  strong,  and  the  word  of  God  abideth 
in  you,  and  ye  have  overcome  the  wicked  one."  2 

1  Proverbs  ix,  31.  *  i  John  ii,  14. 

117 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

The  sages  of  our  book  are  peculiarly  fond  of  the 
young  man:  addressing  him  as  "My  son,"  and 
pointing  out  with  love  and  tender  solicitude  the 
temptations  to  which  a  young  man  is  exposed. 
But  though  the  Hebrew  Wisdom  is  assiduous 
to  surround  the  young  man  with  warning  and 
counsel,  it  does  not  assume  him  to  be  naturally 
depraved,  or  to  be  in  mischief  as  soon  as  he  is 
out  of  sight,  or  to  be  necessarily  a  sower  of  wild 
oats.  That  tendency  of  life  it  leaves  not  to  the 
young  man,  as  such,  but  to  the  young  calf  of  whom 
we  have  just  spoken.  It  takes  the  young  man 
rather  on  the  ground  of  his  manhood  and  health 
and  freedom.  It  seems  to  assume  that  the  perilous 
years  of  life  are  not  the  young  years  of  vision  and 
energy  and  enthusiasm,  when  life  is  on  the  up 
grade,  but  the  decaying  old  years  of  disillusion 
and  disenchantment.  The  later  sage,  Ecclesiastes, 
who  on  this  point  surely  has  a  right  to  speak, 
gives  this  classic  expression  to  it:  — 

"Rejoice,  O  young  man,  in  thy  youth, 
And  let  thy  heart  cheer  thee  in  the  days  of  thy  young  manhood; 
And  walk  thou  in  the  ways  of  thy  heart, 
And  in  the  sight  of  thine  eyes; 

And  know  that  for  all  these  God  will  bring  thee  into  judgment; 
And  remove  sorrow  from  thy  heart, 
And  put  away  evil  from  thy  flesh; 
For  youth  and  the  morn  of  life  are  vanity. 
118 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

Remember  also  thy  Creator  in  the  days  of  thy  young  man- 
hood, 

Ere  yet  the  evil  days  are  come, 
Or  drawn  nigh  the  years  when  thou  shalt  say, 
'  No  pleasure  in  them  for  me.'  "  1 

Thus  it  is  that  Wisdom,  from  early  to  late,  values 
the  healthy  play  of  life  and  manly  vigor  in  its 
favorite  pupil,  the  young  man. 

Then,  thirdly,  this  preface  names  the  matured 
man  of  wisdom  and  understanding;  the  man  who 
is  already  moving  at  home  in  the  seasoned  know- 
ledge of  life.  And  what  he  will  get  from  this  book 
is  increase  of  wisdom,  and  his  understanding 
heart  will  attain  to  wise  counsels.  It  is  with  the 
man  already  wise,  after  all,  the  man  who  already 
has  a  fund  of  experience,  that  these  counsels  will 
take  the  line  of  least  resistance  and  yield  most 
result. 

"Give  instruction  to  a  wise  man,  and  he  will  be  yet  wiser: 
Teach  a  righteous  man,  and  he  will  increase  in  learning,"  2 

writes  this  same  editor,  a  little  farther  on;  just 
as  in  the  same  strain  the  Supreme  Wisdom  later 
says,  "  For  whosoever  hath,  to  him  shall  be  given, 
and  he  shall  have  more  abundance."  It  is  to  him 
who  will  listen  and  weigh  and  ponder,  and  not  to 
him  who  scorns  and  scoffs,  that  appeals  can  be 
made. 

1  Ecclesiastes  xi,  p-xii,  i.  J  Proverbs  ix,  9. 

119 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

About  fools,  too,  the  Wisdom  books  have  much 
to  say;  but  fools  are  not  included  in  this  pre- 
face; and  generally  they  are  treated  as  a  hopeless 
lot,  whom  it  is  not  worth  while  to  waste  words 
upon. 

"Though  thou  shouldst  bray  a  fool  in  a  mortar, 
With  a  pestle  along  with  bruised  corn, 
Yet  will  not  his  foolishness  depart  from  him,"  l 

says  one  of  the  Hezekian  proverbs.  Wisdom,  after 
all,  is  for  wise  men,  and  for  those  who  have  the 
making  of  wise  men;  it  is  well  aware,  as  was  our 
Lord,  what  natures  are  unappreciative  of  pearls. 

Immediately  after  the  preface  on  which  we 
have  so  dwelt,  this  opening  section  and  with  it 
the  whole  book  —  nay  the  whole  Wisdom  litera- 
ture —  is  launched,  pushed  out  from  shore,  so 
to  say,  by  a  single  couplet  mashal  which  may 
be  regarded  as  the  great  focal  axiom  of  Wisdom. 
All  grows  out  of  this,  and  it  is  the  enduring  glory 
of  the  Hebrew  sage  to  have  seized  upon  this  as 
his  vitalizing,  informing  principle.  Awhile  ago 
I  named,  as  one  element  which  superadded  to 
knowledge  makes  it  wisdom,  knowledge  of  the 
things  which,  because  they  quicken  as  well  as 
inform,  are  the  things  supremely  worth  knowing. 
But  that  takes  us  only  a  little  way,  only  as  far  as 

1  Proverbs  xxvii,  22. 
1 2O 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

Mr.  Morley's  clever  definition  at  the  beginning 
of  our  chapter,  which  one  feels  to  have  left  a 
nameless  something,  an  essential  ingredient,  lack- 
ing. The  second  element,  more  vital  than  it  looks, 
reduces  to  a  very  plain  bit  of  common  sense.  If 
you  want  to  know  a  thing,  you  must  begin  right, 
must  begin  at  the  beginning.  In  modern  idiom 
we  might  call  this  the  temper  of  Wisdom.  Evident 
enough:  what,  then,  is  the  indispensable  beginning 
of  the  knowledge  which  is  knowledge  indeed  ?  I 
will  give  the  couplet  as  I  think  our  sage  tried  to 
emphasize  it:  — 

"The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  knowledge, 
They  are  fools  who  despise  wisdom  and  discipline."  l 

The  fear  of  the  Lord  —  what  is  that  ?  Let  us 
dismiss  from  our  mind  utterly  that  sense  of  abject- 
ness,  shrinking  guilt,  cowardice,  torpor,  which  we 
lightly  associate  with  the  word  fear.  The  sages 
would  surely  never  have  seized  upon  it  with  such 
eager  rapture  of  discovery,  would  never  have  so 
iterated  its  praises,  if  that  were  what  it  meant. 
What  it  most  nearly  means  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  to-day  is  reverence,  —  the  sanity  of  the 
hushed,  bowed,  receptive  heart,  which  would  pen- 
etrate its  problem  not  in  the  spirit  of  a  proud 
conqueror,  but  of  a  waiting  compliant  disciple. 

1  Proverbs  i,  7. 
121 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

To  know  things  as  they  are,  you  must  sit  down 
before  them  and  the  mysterious  source  and  goal 
of  them  —  nay,  rather,  kneel  before  them  —  with 
an  open,  humble,  teachable  spirit,  a  spirit  which  in 
every  phenomenon  senses  the  presence  of  a  power, 
a  pulsation,  which  spreads  and  grows,  back  and 
forward,  around  and  beneath  and  above,  until  it 
fills  the  universe  full.  To  be  in  such  life-attitude 
as  this,  by  whatever  terms  defined,  is  to  have  the 
devout  beginning  of  knowledge  which  to  those 
deep-seeing  sages  was  so  essential.  "  Reverence, 
the  highest  feeling  that  man's  nature  is  capable 
of,  the  crown  of  his  moral  manhood,  and  precious, 
like  fine  gold,  were  it  in  the  rudest  forms,"  is  how 
a  modern  sage,  Carlyle,  describes  it.  Nor  did  the 
Hebrew  sage  omit  to  define  this  by  its  contrary. 
No  spiritual  attitude  so  constantly  incurs  his  rep- 
robation as  that  of  the  scoffer  or  "froward" 
man;  with  the  trait  of  scorn  in  control,  or  its 
reverence-denying  cognates  pride  and  self-conceit, 
Wisdom  could  make  no  beginning. 

"  Surely  he  scorneth  the  scorners ; 
But  he  giveth  grace  to  the  lowly."  l 

Such  fear  of  the  Lord  was  felt  not  only  to  be 
rich  in  intellectual  insight  and  grasp,  but  to  have 
a  blessedness  in  itself.  "Happy  is  the  man  that 

1  Proverbs  iii,  34. 
122 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

feareth  alway,"  says  one  of  the  Hezekian  pro- 
verbs. Nay,  and  so  large  and  luminous  did  this 
fear  of  the  Lord  become  in  the  sages'  scheme  of 
Wisdom  that  every  good  potency  was  ascribed 
to  it.  Jesus  Sirach,  in  his  opening  eulogy  of  Wis- 
dom, thus  enlarges  upon  it:  — 

"The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  glory,  and  exultation, 
And  gladness,  and  a  crown  of  rejoicing. 
The  fear  of  the  Lord  shall  delight  the  heart, 
And  shall  give  gladness,  and  joy,  and  length  of  days. 
Whoso  feareth  the  Lord,  it  shall  go  well  with  him  at  the  last, 
And  in  the  day  of  his  death  he  shall  be  blessed."  ' 

Nor  does  it  remain  the  mere  starting-point  and 
vestibule  of  Wisdom;  its  horizon  expands  until 
it  covers  the  whole  Wisdom  field,  so  that  Wisdom 
becomes  practically  identified  with  piety.  Even 
Job,  after  his  sense  of  God's  injustice  has  led  him 
through  amazing  depths  of  a  remonstrance  that 
seems  to  have  cast  all  reverence  to  the  winds,  still 
clings  to  this  as  the  sheet-anchor:  — 

"Behold,  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that  is  Wisdom, 
And  to  shun  evil  is  understanding."  2 

Ecclesiastes,  too,  who  takes  up  the  next  stage, 
when  the  Wisdom  sentiment  was  identified  with 
that  management  of  things  which  brings  success, 
and  for  whom  the  tenderly  intimate  pulsation  of 

1  £cclesiasticus  i,  11-13. 

2  Job  xxviii,  28. 

123 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

fear  had  largely  subsided  before  a  distant,  unap- 
proachable Deity,  yet  solves  many  problems  by 
the  fear  of  God,  and  sums  up  all  with  this  pre- 
cept: "The  end  of  the  matter;  this  heard,  all  is 
heard:  Fear  God  and  keep  his  commandments, 
for  this  is  the  sum  of  manhood."  *  Jesus  Sirach, 
in  his  enthusiastic  way,  enlarges  on  the  fear  of  the 
Lord  as  not  only  the  beginning,  but  the  fulness 
and  the  crown  and  the  root  of  Wisdom. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this  because  it  is  so  far-reaching. 
It  lays  hold  on  the  scientific  temper  of  our  latest 
days.  We  are  all  proud  of  what  our  present-day 
methods  of  gaining  knowledge  have  done  and  are 
doing;  the  apparatus  is  so  exact,  the  approach 
so  deft  and  bold.  We  are  amazed  to  see  so  many 
doors  of  nature  fly  open  before  the  adventurous 
discoverer.  Yet  another  thing  also  the  sensitive 
age  has  marked,  not  without  pain:  the  arrogance 
that  victorious  science  has  too  often  engendered; 
the  insolent  assurance  with  which  men  have 
rushed  into  the  secret  sanctuaries  of  nature  and 
cuffed  her  laws  about  as  if  they  were  the  lords  and 
arbitrators  of  them.  The  fact  that  nature  was 
so  patient  and  gracious  has  not  always  begotten 
a  responsive  patience  and  graciousness  on  men's 
part;  and  so  too  often  the  human  heart  has  in- 

1  Ecclesiastes  xii,  13. 
124 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

curred  an  atrophy  and  blight  from  its  very  wealth 
of  achievement.  Tennyson  felt  this  in  his  day,  and 
raised  his  voice  in  warning.  Knowledge  is  good, 
he  said,  is  full  of  power  and  beauty;  let  her  work 
prevail:  — 

"But  on  her  forehead  sits  a  fire; 

She  sets  her  forward  countenance 
And  leaps  into  the  future  chance, 
Submitting  all  things  to  desire."  * 

And  the  remedy  he  proposes  is  just  what  these 
old  Hebrew  sages,  with  the  instinct  of  true  science, 
started  with. 

"Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more, 
But  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell; 
That  mind  and  soul,  according  well, 

May  make  one  music  as  before, 

But  vaster."  2 

Carlyle,  too,  holding  forth  the  claims  of  the  spirit 
in  the  crass  rationalism  of  his  generation,  has  the 
same  remedy,  the  same  coefficient  of  reverence 
to  add  to  the  achievements  of  research.  "The 
man  who  cannot  wonder,"  he  says,  "who  does  not 
habitually  wonder  (and  worship),  were  he  Presi- 
dent of  innumerable  Royal  Societies,  and  carried 
the  *  Mechanique  Celeste'  and  'Hegel's  Philo- 
sophy,' and  the  epitome  of  all  Laboratories  and 
Observatories  with  their  results,  in  his  single  head, 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cxiv. 

2  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  Prologue. 

12$ 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 
—  is  but  a  Pair  of  Spectacles  behind  which  there 
is  no  Eye."  1 

in 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  beginning,  the  first 
term,  of  the  Hebrew  philosophy  of  personality: 
the  fear  of  the  Lord,  of  a  heedful  cosmic  Power 
and  Wisdom.  This  is  his  initial  apparatus  and 
adjustment;  to  him  in  his  distinctive  quest  what 
the  astronomer's  telescope  and  the  biologist's 
microscope  and  dissecting-knife  are  to  them. 

But  the  philosophers  say,  this  is  taking  refuge 
in  religion;  it  is  forsaking  the  road  of  human  and, 
as  it  were,  scientific  research,  and  falling  back  on 
an  assumed  supernatural  revelation.  So  we  find 
after  all,  they  urge,  that  the  sages,  the  humanists 
of  Israel  as  Professor  Cheyne  calls  them,  with  all 
their  appearance  of  attacking  the  enigma  of  life 
independently  and  with  mere  native  insight,  can- 
not work  out  their  problem  without  extraneous 
help;  like  priests  and  prophets  they  draw  on  their 
tradition  of  the  supernatural,  or  what  has  been 
told  them,  not  on  what  they  themselves  discover. 

No:  that  is  not  the  way  I  look  at  it.  Their 
tenet  of  the  value  of  reverence,  with  its  presuppo- 
sition of  a  Being  to  revere,  is  not  an  untested  loan 

1  Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus,  Book  i,  chap.  x. 
126 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

from  the  sanctuary;  not  an  assumption;  it  is  an 
authentic  discovery.  It  is  the  answer  that  comes 
back  from  the  universe  according  to  what  they 
put  into  it.  A  man  who  puts  arrogance  into  his 
investigations  gets  only  hardness  in  response.  A 
man  who  brings  reverence  and  the  open  heart 
receives  answer  to  correspond,  expressed  in  terms 
of  insight  and  a  life  like  that  which  is  worshipped. 
Reverence  yearns  out  into  the  darkness,  — 

"And  out  of  darkness  [come]  the  hands 
That  reach  thro'  nature  moulding  men."  l 

And  what  thus  acts  on  their  lives  they  do  not 
hesitate  to  name  God,  and  to  identify  with  the 
God  of  their  fathers.  It  is  no  discredit  to  their 
discoveries  in  life  that  these  coincide  with  what 
priests  and  prophets  also  hold:  that* they  have 
taken  the  priest's  Mosaic  conception  of  law  and 
made  it  universal  and  cosmic;  that  they  have 
taken  the  prophet's  asserted  direct  vision  and  set 
up  no  word  of  contradiction.  They  can  live  and 
let  live;  can  leave  these  other  classes  to  their 
departments  of  truth  while  they  work  in  their  own. 
They  have  their  own  dialect  and  vocabulary,  not 
a  conventional  echo  of  the  temple  or  the  schools  of 
the  prophets,  but  the  transparent  medium  of  their 
own  undictated  thoughts.  If  they  speak  religiously, 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cxxiv. 
127 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

it  is  not  because  the  decree  of  the  church  or  of 
orthodoxy  is  laid  upon  them,  but  because  their 
own  soul  has  come  to  see  that  the  way  of  rever- 
ence is  the  way  of  wisdom,  that  the  truth  of  life 
comes  that  way. 

Now  as  the  sages  thus  put  reverence  and  its 
resulting  insight,  like  question  and  answer, 
together,  they  were  learning  something  very 
different  from  what  the  glittering  Urim  of  the 
priest's  breastplate  or  the  ecstatic  oracle  of  the 
seer  could  reveal  to  them.  These  were,  after  all, 
extraneous,  extrinsic;  could  paralyze  them  with 
dread,  perhaps,  or  raise  an  idle  sense  of  the 
marvellous,  but  left  them  essentially  the  men  they 
were.  By  this  vital  Wisdom,  however,  as  it  went 
on  and  grew,  they  were  exploring  their  own  souls, 
discovering  progressively,  like  Hamlet,  what  a  piece 
of  work  is  man,  how  noble  in  reason,  how  infinite 
in  faculties.  And  so  the  sign  that  like  true  Jews 
they  required  and  obtained,  a  sign  no  less  truly 
from  heaven  for  being  expressed  in  human  terms, 
was  a  sign  that  they  observed  in  life  and  sanity  and 
character.  Like  Paracelsus  with  his  consuming 
hunger  for  knowledge,  they  were  discovering  that 

"Truth  is  within  ourselves;   it  takes  no  rise 
From  outward  things,  whate'er  you  may  believe. 
There  is  an -inmost  centre  in  us  all, 
128 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

Where  truth  abides  in  fulness:    .  .  .  and  to  KNOW 
Rather  consists  in  opening  out  a  way 
Whence  the  imprisoned  splendor  may  escape, 
Than  in  effecting  entry  for  a  light 
Supposed  to  be  without."  ' 

There  it  was,  pulsing  with  life,  domesticated,  in- 
trinsic; knowledge  shot  through  with  vital  power. 
That  this  sign  of  knowledge  was  recognized 
as  from  heaven,  as  coordinate  in  authority  there- 
fore with  priest's  law  and  prophet's  oracle,  we 
have  one  of  the  loftiest  strains  of  poetic  por- 
trayal in  the  Bible  to  attest.  The  Praise  of  Wis- 
dom in  the  eighth  chapter  means  just  this;  it  is 
a  monument  to  the  rapture  which  attends  the 
discovery  that  man's  intellectual  powers,  his 
insight  and  acumen  and  sagacity,  are  powers 
that  ally  him  with  God.  A  yoke  of  law  has  been 
imposed  upon  man  by  the  priest;  a  need  of  repent- 
ance and  contrition  dinned  into  him  by  the 
prophet;  and  these  inculcations  are  true;  they 
are  two  great  strands  of  life,  of  that  cable  by 
which  we  are  bound  to  the  Source  of  life.  But 
now  to  know  that  there  is  a  third  strand,  the 
strand  of  his  own  spontaneous  powers,  whereby, 
as  he  reverently  follows  the  promptings  of  his 
own  mind,  he  may  win  to  the  calm,  wise  gov- 
ernance of  life,  —  this  is  a  consciousness  full  of 

1  Browning,  Paracelsus,  i,  726  sqq. 
129 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

rapturous  awe.  His  imagination  lays  hold  of  the 
idea  and  makes  it  an  objective  thing.  He  separates 
it,  as  the  creative,  contriving,  upbuilding  attribute 
of  God's  nature,  from  the  rest,  and  figures  it  as 
if  it  were  a  goddess,  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  who  in 
her  own  name  and  initiative  speaks  to  the  sons  of 
men. 

"The  Lord  formed  me  in  the  beginning  of  his  way, 
Before  his  works  of  old. 
I  was  set  up  from  everlasting, 
From  the  beginning,  ere  the  earth  was; 
When  there  were  no  depths  I  was  brought  forth; 
When  there  were  no  fountains  abounding  with  water. 
Before  the  hills  was  I  brought  forth; 
While  as  yet  he  had  not  made  the  earth,  nor  the  fields, 
Nor  the  beginning  of  the  dust  of  the  world. 
When  he  established  the  heavens,  I  was  there; 
When  he  set  a  circle  upon  the  face  of  the  deep, 
When  he  made  firm  the  skies  above, 
When  the  fountains  of  the  deep  became  strong, 
When  he  gave  to  the  sea  its  bound, 
That  the  waters  should  not  transgress  his  commandment, 
When  he  marked  out  the  foundations  of  the  earth; 
Then  was  I  by  him,  as  a  master  workman; 
And  had  delight  day  by  day, 
Sporting  always  before  him, 
Sporting  in  his  habitable  earth; 
And  my  delight  was  with  the  sons  of  men."  * 

The  Hebrew  had  no  mind  for  cloudy  abstrac- 
tions.   A  conception  did  not  form  itself  in  terms 

1  Proverbs  viii,  22-31. 
130 


of  logic,  but  stood  before  him  with  the  color  and 
contour  of  a  natural  object,  or  the  speech  and 
traits  of  a  living  personage.  Think  what  is  here 
so  nearly  deified;  imaged  as  sporting  like  a  crea- 
tive artist,  whose  inventive  achievements  are  an 
abounding  joy  like  the  joy  of  play.  It  is  just 
man's  intellect, — that  power  of  thought  and  wise 
masterfulness  which  has  revealed  itself  in  the 
sage's  own  person;  with  its  free  initiative,  its  glad 
circulation  through  earth  and  heaven,  its  opening 
of  a  common  meeting-place  between  human  and 
divine.  For  a  nation  whose  holy  God  of  law,  in 
ordinary  conception,  is  so  remote  and  unapproach- 
able, this  is  a  most  daring,  penetrative  achieve- 
ment of  poetic  philosophy. 

IV 

Nor  is  it  without  its  perils.  In  the  assurance 
which  such  discoveries  in  nature  and  the  world 
engenders  men  may  easily  go  too  far.  They  are 
sure  to  do  so,  indeed,  if  they  invade  their  field 
only  in  the  pride  of  achievement,  and  do  not  regu- 
late their  rash,  venturesome  hearts  by  the  balance- 
wheel  of  reverence.  With  this  initial  feeling  of 
reverence  in  control,  it  would  be  strange  if  the 
Hebrew  consciousness,  so  jealous  lest  any  other 
Deity  share  honors  with  his  one  God,  should  not 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

sooner  or  later  take  alarm.  The  first  term  of  the 
Hebrew's  philosophy,  as  I  said  in  a  former  chap- 
ter, is  God;  to  make  Him,  as  other  philosophies 
do,  the  last,  a  term  to  be  dissected  and  analyzed, 
differentiated  into  god  and  goddess,  creator  and 
demiurge,  substance  and  attributes,  is  a  procedure 
to  be  watched  and  guarded.  Vivid  realization  lies 
that  way,  but  also  risk  and  danger;  we  must  not 
forget  to  put  the  shoes  off  our  feet  when  we  enter 
here.  Our  beginning  of  wisdom  must  be  in  super- 
lative degree  our  guide  and  temper  when  we  ven- 
ture to  project  our  own  endowments  into  the  court 
of  heaven  and  create  a  speculative  God. 

Just  here,  and  I  think  in  this  implication, 
comes  in  that  strange  section  of  the  Book  of 
Proverbs,  one  of  the  latest  of  all,  entitled  The 
Words  of  Agur,  the  son  of  Jakeh.  The  way  this 
writer  makes  sudden  irruption  into  the  exultant 
and  perhaps  too  self-complacent  body  of  Wisdom 
utterance,  reminds  one  of  that  old  story  of  the 
city  which  had  three  gates;  on  the  first  of  which 
the  adventurous  knight  read  inscribed,  "  Be  bold," 
on  the  second  yet  again,  "  Be  bold,  and  evermore 
be  bold,"  and  on  the  third,  "  Be  not  too  bold.'* 
Agur  represents  himself  as  just  a  common  untu- 
tored man,  who  has  never  gone  into  the  technical- 
ities of  Wisdom,  and  is  more  thick-headed  than 
132 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

ordinary  men;  and  so  what  is  suited  to  him  must 
be  truths  adapted  to  dull  intellects,  not  the  soaring 
transcendental  speculations  of  the  accredited  sage. 
Yet  he  is  sure  that  the  caution  he  has  to  urge  is  an 
authentic  oracle,  a  "burden."  The  beginning  of 
the  section,  in  our  Bibles,  is  obscured  by  being  left 
untranslated.  We  get  no  definite  meaning  out  of 
"The  man  said  unto  Ithiel,  unto  Ithiel  and  Ucal." 
The  words  read  in  the  original  like  some  homely 
colloquial  or  dialect  form;  but  they  are  trans- 
latable thus:  "The  man  said  (the  word  man 
means  a  big  kind  of  rudimental  man),  'I  have 
wearied  myself,  O  God,  I  have  wearied  myself, 
O  God,  and  am  exhausted."5  Let  me  give  the 
beginning  of  his  words  in  a  translation  made  in 
verse  form  by  my  brother,  who  has  kindly  per- 
mitted me  to  use  it :  — 

"I  have  mused  on  high  themes  till  I  'm  weary,  God  knows, 

And  used  up  my  wits  all  in  vain. 
I  might  better  leave  these  great  subjects  alone, 

And  keep  to  what 's  homely  and  plain. 
For  I  'm  duller  by  nature  than  average  men; 

No  cleverness,  surely,  is  mine; 
And  the  'Wisdom'  they  boast  of  I  never  have  learned, 

Nor  the  lore  in  which  holy  ones  shine."  l 

Then  he  goes  on  to  question  whether  it  is  so 
easy  to  fathom  God's  nature,  and  by  owning  that 

1  Proverbs  xxx,  1-3. 
133 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

such  speculation  is  beyond  his  humble  intellect, 
to  intimate  that  in  the  whole  matter  human  intel- 
lects, cobblers  at  best,  may  easily  get  beyond 
their  last.  To  quote  another  stanza  of  the  verse 
translation :  — 

"But  tell  me,  ye  wise  ones  who  know  all  so  well, 

How  you  came  by  these  wonderful  things? 
Who  has  gone  up  to  heaven,  such  knowledge  to  share 

As  only  Omnipotence  brings? 
Who  grasps  the  wild  winds,  holds  the  sea  in  His  cloak, 

And  the  bounds  of  the  earth  thus  confirms? 
Come,  tell  me  His  name,  and  His  son's  name  as  well, 

Since  you  live  on  such  intimate  terms!"1 

"  Be  not  too  bold."  Agur,  the  plain  knight,  or 
rather  stalwart  squire  of  Wisdom  enterprise,  has 
reached  the  third  city  gate.  He  is  calling  a  halt 
before  the  Wisdom  thinkers  get  in  too  deep  for  a 
reverent  tread.  By  this  attitude  of  Agur's  one  is 
reminded  of  the  instinctive  reticence  which  has 
kept  the  Jew  these  many  centuries  from  pro- 
nouncing the  dread  Name  of  Jehovah  lest  he  pro- 
fane it  or  take  it  in  vain.  Wherever  it  occurs  in 
his  reading  he  leaves  it  unuttered,  and  pronounces 
instead  the  name  Adonai,  the  Lord.  I  confess  I 
do  the  same  when  I  read  Hebrew;  I  have  come  to 
respect,  as  not  unwholesome,  that  feeling  which 
will  not  bandy  the  sacred  Name  about,  in  idle 

1  Proverbs  xxx,  4. 
134 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

heedlessness.  That  same  feeling  has  been  potent 
in  our  most  reverent  and  penetrative  literature. 
Faust,  the  insatiable  explorer  of  knowledge  plain 
and  occult,  will  not  bring  himself  to  put  the  su- 
preme Object  of  research  into  the  limits  of  human 

terms :  — 

"Who  dare  express  Him? 

And  who  profess  Him? 
Saying,  I  believe  in  Him! 

Who  feeling,  seeing, 

Deny  His  being, 
Saying,  I  believe  Him  not!"  * 

Tennyson,  too,  giving  voice  to  the  uneasy  and 
doubting  spirit  of  his  day,  in  similar  manner  leaves 
God  unnamed:  — 

"  That  which  we  dare  invoke  to  bless; 
Our  dearest  faith;  our  ghastliest  doubt; 
He,  They,  One,  All;  within,  without; 
The  Power  in  darkness  whom  we  guess;"  * 

and  just  like  Agur,  he  is  humble  enough  to  confess 
that  his  philosophy  has  limitations:  — 

"I  found  Him  not  in  world  or  sun, 
Or  eagle's  wing,  or  insect's  eye; 
Nor  thro'  the  questions  men  may  try, 
The  petty  cobwebs  we  have  spun."  J 

This  feeling  is  not  all  negative  or  sceptical;  not 
the  murmur  of  a  torpid  heart,  but  the  yearning  of 
a  sensitive  one;  I  dare  to  call  it  wholesome.  Agur 

1  Goethe,  Faust,  Part  i,  sc.  xvi. 

*  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cxxiv.          *  In  Memoriam,  cxxiv 

135 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

represents  himself,  indeed,  as  "  more  brutish  than 
any  man,"  but  this  merely  in  ironical  comparison 
with  the  superfine  pretensions  of  academic  learn- 
ing; and  at  any  rate  he  interposes  the  instinct  of 
the  plain  nature  to  check  the  speculative  adven- 
tures in  which  Wisdom  might  so  easily  swamp 
itself,  and  to  bring  men's  regards  back  to  the 
terra  fir?na  of  practical  things  and  the  simple  life. 
This  indeed  is  pretty  evidently  his  great  pur- 
pose. Everybody  feels  it  in  reading  his  famous 
prayer,  which  after  four  lines  follows  what  I 
have  quoted:  — 

"Two  things  have  I  asked  of  thee; 
Deny  me  them  not  before  I  die: 
Remove  far  from  me  falsehood  and  lies; 
Give  me  neither  poverty  nor  riches; 
Feed  me  with  the  food  that  is  needful  for  me- 
Lest  I  be  full,  and  deny  thee,  saying,  Who  is  the  Lord? 
Or  lest  I  be  poor,  and  steal, 
And  handle  the  name  of  my  God."  l 

We  have  lately  been  reading  and  discussing  "The 
Simple  Life;"  this  is  the  prayer  which  puts  into 
worship  and  aspiration  the  simple  life.  Socrates 
used  to  offer  a  prayer  a  good  deal  like  it:  "Be- 
loved Pan,  and  all  ye  gods  who  haunt  this  place, 
give  me  beauty  in  the  inward  soul;  and  may  the 
outward  and  inward  man  be  at  one.  May  I 

1  Proverbs  xxx,  7-9. 
136 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

reckon  the  wise  to  be  the  wealthy;  and  may  I 
have  such  a  quantity  of  gold  as  none  but  the  tem- 
perate can  carry.  Anything  more  ?  That  prayer, 
I  think,  is  enough  for  me."  l 

But  perhaps  we  have  not  noticed  why  Agur  so 
desires  truth  in  his  life  and  moderation  in  his  lot. 
It  is  in  the  interest  of  reverence;  he  cannot  bear 
the  thought  of  denying  God,  or  "handling"  His 
name,  that  is,  profaning  Him.  In  other  words,  he  is 
calling  his  soul  back  to  the  beginning  of  wisdom; 
coming  down  to  earth  from  the  clouds  where  the 
sages  are  tending  to  soar;  just  as  Browning's  Abt 
Vogler  came  back  from  the  airy  musical  rhapso- 
dies and  modulations  which  he  had  been  so  raptur- 
ously improvising  to  the  sober  C  major  of  this  life. 

For  the  rest,  Agur's  actual  wisdom  is  not  quite 
up  to  the  high  Wisdom  level.  Perhaps  he  sets  the 
key  of  the  plain  man's  standard  of  knowledge 
a  little  too  low;  there  is  a  note  of  the  plebeian, 
the  Philistine,  in  his  words,  which  jars  a  little. 
His  numerical  maxims  do  not  handle  elemental 
themes;  they  have  the  flavor  of  obiter  dicta;  are 
a  little  off  from  the  tempered  Wisdom  system,  like 
the  notions  of  a  self-made  man.  It  is  to  the  dis- 
ciplined, cultivated  sage,  after  all,  that  we  must 

1  Quoted  at  second  hand  from  Hyde,  From  Epicurus  to  Christ, 
P-  159- 

137 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

go  for  the  fine  and  deep  lessons  of  life ;  and  if 
an  Agur,  looking  up  to  him  from  below,  holds  the 
plea  for  plainness  and  moderation  and  reverence, 
let  us  accept  him  for  what  he  has  to  give,  not 
for  his  limitations.  For  Wisdom  is  still  wisdom, 
and  has  its  heights  and  hidden  treasures  as  well 
as  its  lowly  feats  and  levels. 


How  now  shall  I  say  the  final  word,  to  make 
the  essential  tissue  and  fibre  of  straight  Wisdom 
palpable  to  us  ?  It  is  all  so  obviously  right,  so 
fitted  to  man  as  he  is,  that  we  do  not  easily  think 
how  it  differentiates  from  what  the  perverse  heart 
would  grasp  at  in  lieu  of  it.  We  are  half  tempted, 
perhaps,  to  ask,  Why  need  we  have  such  elaborate 
apparatus  of  sages  and  schools  to  establish  what 
the  rack  could  not  compel  us  to  deny  ? 

I  was  once  talking  over  with  a  friend  the  twists 
of  expediency  that  certain  men  of  our  acquaint- 
ance would  adopt  in  order  to  get  on,  or  to  get 
the  show  of  good  work  without  the  substance, 
working  harder  to  make  some  crooked  means 
avail  than  a  straight  course  would  ever  require; 
and  in  the  end  he  remarked,  "After  all,  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  be  good."  This  is  about 
what  our  summary  reduces  to.  Shrewdness,  keen 

138 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

mother-wit,  is  a  desirable  endowment:  but  you 
cannot  bank  on  mere  shrewdness  or  opportunism, 
or  pulling  wires  or  laying  pipe  or  hoodwinking 
the  underlying  laws  of  things.  Conventional  order 
and  decency  is  a  necessary  thing:  but  you  cannot 
develop  individual  manhood  by  going  through 
ceremonies  or  ruling  vogues  or  pious  motions. 
Abysmal  learning,  knowledge  of  remote  facts  and 
laws,  is  a  valuable  asset  of  life;  but  your  know- 
ledge may  outstrip  your  character  and  puff  you 
up  and  destroy  the  balance  of  your  personality. 
All  these  may  answer  in  some  emergency,  and 
they  may  not;  there  is  nothing  fundamental,  no- 
thing that  takes  hold  of  the  roots  of  things,  in 
them.  There  is  nothing  for  it,  after  however  long 
your  circuit  of  ranging  for  a  substitute,  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  be  good.  Now  we  can  begin 
to  see  how  truly  the  Hebrew  sage  has  explored 
and  established  a  great  law  of  being.  He  has 
ranged  through  experience  and  inquired  in  many 
a  detail  how  man  set  here  at  the  parting  of  count- 
less ways  shall  find  the  one  way;  shall  master  the 
situation  and  manage  his  world.  The  Hebrew  was 
concerned  with  the  unity  of  personality,  its  great 
controlling  current;  and  in  the  absorbingness  of 
this  concern  the  kinds  and  minutiae  of  character, 
its  casuistry,  were  of  comparatively  secondary  in- 

139 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

terest.  Good  and  wicked,  wise  and  foolish,  these 
are  his  simple  categories:  other  traits  are  ranged 
under  these  as  tributary,  or  mere  aspects.  So 
other  things,  when  mentioned,  are  conducted 
straight  up  to  these.  From  all  his  excursions  for 
light,  after  he  has  weighed  and  evaluated  the  can- 
didacy of  many  a  cherished  expedient,  he  has 
returned  to  this  as  the  Newtonian  law,  the  corner- 
stone of  his  system:  If  you  would  be  wise,  to 
master  and  manage  your  world,  be  good;  to  be 
perverse  and  wicked,  however  gainful  or  pleasur- 
able it  seems,  is  inevitably  to  be  a  fool.  Thus 
religion  and  worldly  sagacity  strike  hands;  work 
is  married  to  worship;  and  success,  in  whatever 
region  of  piety  or  learning  or  activity,  is  built  on 
one  foundation. 

And  the  success,  —  what  of  that  ?  One  may  be 
sure  no  Hebrew  would  omit  to  ask,  What  comes 
of  it  all  ?  What  is  there  in  it  ? 

Well,  he  did  not  pause  for  the  joke  of  our 
satirical  humorist,  "Be  good  and  you  will  be 
lonesome;"  he  was  too  single-minded,  perhaps, 
to  think  how  his  goodness  would  make  him  feel. 
But  neither  did  he  postpone  the  result,  as  many  do 
nowadays,  saying,  "  Be  good  and  you  will  go  to 
heaven  when  you  die."  His  wisdom  was  founded, 
as  we  are  aware,  in  a  time  when  men  had  not 

140 


STRAIGHT  WISDOM 

discovered  this  convenient  salve  for  disappoint- 
ment; he  had  to  find  success  in  life  without  the 
knowledge,  and  therefore  without  the  motive,  of 
immortality.  And  from  the  outset  he  went  straight 
to  the  point,  spelling  success  and  failure  in  very 
concrete  and  practical  terms.  He  sought  his  re- 
ward here,  in  the  things  it  was  his  lot  to  work 
with:  he  measured  it  in  wealth,  health,  honor, 
prosperity,  numerous  family,  length  of  days.  Be 
good,  he  said,  and  you  are  in  the  way  to  secure 
these.  We  may  almost  put  it,  Be  good  and  you 
will  get  rich.  The  failure,  too,  to  which  the 
wicked  and  the  fool  were  tending,  was  equally 
sharp  in  its  concrete  definition:  they  would  come 
to  want,  to  disease,  to  shame,  to  poverty,  to  deso- 
lation and  desertion,  to  premature  death.  All 
these  man  might  depend  upon  under  the  sun,  in 
the  sight  of  men,  in  the  channels  of  business;  all 
these  were  felt  to  rest  on  a  law  of  being  so  abso- 
lute that  no  smallest  opening  was  left  for  excep- 
tions or  accommodations.  "Behold,"  says  one 
of  the  early  Solomonic  proverbs,  — 

"The  righteous  shall  be  recompensed  in  the  earth: 
Much  more  the  wicked  and  the  sinner."  l 

Here,  then,  in  the  identification  of  wisdom  with 
godliness,  and  godliness  with  success,  is  the  sages* 

1  Proverbs  xi,  31. 
141 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

edifice  of  straight  Wisdom.  They  laid  hold  on 
that  ardent  surge  of  the  Hebrew  mind  toward 
reward,  toward  success;  they  made  no  scruple 
in  setting  up  wealth  as  a  desirable  goal,  worthy 
of  man's  best  powers;  and  it  was  their  glory  to 
have  directed  the  nation's  mind  away  from  the 
sordid,  the  ignoble,  the  unscrupulous  and  de- 
praved, and  to  have  connected  the  real  reward 
only  with  the  noblest  and  sanest  means  and  instru- 
ments. Wealth  and  worldly  success,  so  obtained, 
take  place  among  the  sanctities  and  nobilities  of 
life;  are  things  not  to  be  deprecated,  but  in  all 
good  faith  to  be  lived  and  worked  for.  Life  built 
on  such  foundations  is  well  built. 


142 


THE  ONSET  OF  SCEPTICISM 

I.  The  fallacy  of  the  half-truth. 
II.  The  real  centre  of  the  attack. 

III.  The  Accuser,  and  what  he  means. 

IV.  The  Protagonist  and  his  victory. 

V.  The  summary,  as  related  to  Wisdom. 


IV 
THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 


f  ""^HE  subjects  on  which  we  are  now  enter- 
ing, The  Attack  by  Centre  and  The 
-M-  Attack  by  Flank,  have  a  truculent, 
belligerent  sound,  as  if  the  writer  had  got  on  the 
scent  of  some  of  those  religious  controversies 
which,  like  mare's  nests,  modern  criticism  has 
been  so  prone  to  find  in  sacred  history.  Some 
biblical  scholars  seem  to  think  that  we  cannot 
make  clear  to  ourselves  the  inner  progress  of 
truth  without  connecting  it  with  such  conflicts  of 
reasoning ;  on  the  principle,  perhaps,  urged  by 
a  certain  disputatious  Scotchman,  who  defended 
his  disagreeable  habit  of  arguing  on  the  ground 
that  without  controversy  great  is  the  mystery  of 
godliness.  I  hasten  to  assure  you,  however,  that 
I  am  not  seeking  to  eliminate  mystery  on  such 
terms.  This  is  not  going  to  be  the  report  of  a 
doctrinal  contention.  Fair  material  for  such,  to  be 
sure,  might  perhaps  be  extracted  from  the  quar- 
rel between  friends  in  the  Book  of  Job,1  which 

1  For  the  detailed  study  of  the  Book  of  Job,  the  author  would  refer 
to  his  book,  The  Epic  oj  the  Inner  Life. 

'45 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

we  are  now  to  consider;  but  this  was  all  in  the 
family,  so  to  say,  and  not  to  be  construed  as  the 
attack  on  the  Wisdom  system  itself  which  our 
title  would  imply.  That  is  something  quite  other, 
and  far  more  momentous,  as  well  as  far  more 
fundamental. 

That  some  such  attack,  or  reaction,  is  involved 
in  the  general  attitude  of  the  Book  of  Job  seems 
to  have  been  dimly  apprehended  in  the  fact  that 
it  has  been  roundly  called  of  late  years  a  sceptical 
book,  and  has  been  treated  as  such.  A  few  years 
ago  Mr.  John  Owen,  who  had  taken  the  history 
of  scepticism  for  his  province,  published  a  book 
entitled,  "The  Five  Great  Sceptical  Dramas  of 
History;"  in  which  book  Job  is  classed  with  the 
"Prometheus  Vinctus"  of  J£schylus,  Goethe's 
"Faust,"  Shakespeare's  "Hamlet,"  and  Calder- 
on's  "El  Magico  Prodigioso;"  his  ground  for 
grouping  them  together  seeming  to  be  that  all  five 
had  some  indictment  against  fate  or  the  universe. 
Well,  Job  and  Prometheus  occupy  similar  posi- 
tions in  the  great  orbit  of  being.  Both  the  works 
that  deal  with  them  are  of  colossal  sweep  and  im- 
port; both  represent  the  soul  of  the  creature  rising 
up  against  its  doom  and  daring  to  call  its  Creator 
to  account.  If  this  be  scepticism,  we  must  make 
the  best  of  it;  for  certainly,  so  long  as  Job  is 

146 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

judging  the  hearsay  and  conventional  God  of  his 
orthodox  tradition,  and  before  his  eye  sees  Him, 
such  is  the  patriarch's  amazingly  dauntless  atti- 
tude. Another  author,  Mr.  E.  J.  Dillon,  at  about 
the  same  time,  classed  together  Job,  Ecclesiastes, 
and  Agur  the  son  of  Jakeh,  as  a  like-minded 
group,  in  a  book  entitled  "The  Sceptics  of  the 
Old  Testament."  Well,  we  have  seen,  in  the 
last  chapter,  what  kind  of  a  sceptic  Agur  was, 
and  how  in  the  interests  of  reverence  he  was 
concerned  to  draw  Wisdom  gently  back  from 
its  too  adventurous  tendencies  to  the  thought- 
sphere  of  the  average  man.  A  fair  all-round  view 
of  Job's  scepticism,  and  of  Ecclesiastes',  will,  I 
am  certain,  prove  equally  reassuring.  We  need 
not  be  scared  at  the  name  if  the  net  results  are 
no  worse  than  come  to  light  in  Agur's  case.  Only, 
I  would  insist  on  just  this  fair,  all-round  esti- 
mate, taking  the  book  as  it  has  lived  and  worked 
through  the  centuries,  and  as  it  is  adapted  to 
work  to-day.  Mr.  Dillon  makes  out  his  case  by 
a  ruthless  butchering  of  the  scripture  text;  dis- 
carding, transposing,  arbitrarily  altering,  nosing 
out  corrupt  readings,  in  a  perfect  orgy  of  what 
he  would  call  higher  criticism.  You  can  do  any- 
thing that  way.  And  in  the  end  the  scepticism 
of  the  Old  Testament  turns  out  to  be  a  thing  just 

147 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

about  as  big,  and  just  about  as  reverent,  as  Mr. 
Dillon's  soul.  The  shrinkage,  to  me,  is  too  great; 
I  cannot  rest  in  it.  I  get  better  results  by  letting 
Job  and  Ecclesiastes  speak  their  whole  mind,  as 
the  record  lies  before  me  in  its  last  edition;  I 
prefer  to  commune  with  the  large  and  lucid  souls 
that  a  sympathetic  view  of  their  words  reveals. 
The  scepticism  that  comes  to  light  in  such  pro- 
cedure is  something  that  we  can  well  endure, 
yes,  domesticate. 

Undeniably,  however,  this  Book  of  Job  resolves 
itself  into  a  veritable  attack  on  something.  Some 
evil  or  defect  has  come  to  view,  whether  in  fact 
or  in  tendency;  and  if  our  fair  fabric  of  Wisdom 
would  survive  and  reach  its  ideal,  things  must 
be  clarified  and  righted.  This  is  but  saying  that 
men's  growing  thoughts  must  be  subjected  to 
constant  test,  proving  their  fibre  and  soundness; 
must  be  probed  as  rigorously  as  the  world  itself, 
of  which  they  are  part.  It  is  to  this  aspect  of  the 
matter  that  we  must  now  confine  ourselves.  I 
cannot  in  one  chapter  tell  you  all  about  the  Book 
of  Job;  it  is  a  universe  in  itself,  in  the  way  it 
opens  our  minds  to  the  deeps  of  being.  All  I  can 
do  is  to  describe,  and  that  in  mere  outline,  its 
function  in  the  evolution  of  Wisdom;  we  are  to 
note  what  attack  it  makes  on  the  very  citadel  of 
148 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

the  sages'  stronghold,  making  well-established 
systems  pass  through  the  fire  of  searching  assay; 
and  how  after  the  smoke  of  battle  has  cleared 
away,  Wisdom,  in  her  true  ideal  and  power, 
emerges  stronger,  statelier  than  ever. 


To  begin  with,  however,  there  rises  naturally  to 
our  minds,  I  can  well  imagine,  the  question,  What 
is  there  to  attack  ?  The  structure  of  straight 
Wisdom,  as  she  has  builded  her  house  and  hewn 
out  her  seven  pillars,  seems  alike  so  devout  and 
reasonable,  so  sane,  so  evidently  right,  so  strongly 
based,  that  there  seem  to  have  been  left  no  weak 
places  in  it.  Life  built  consciously  on  such  foun- 
dations is  well  built;  a  life  of  sound  sense,  open- 
eyed,  reverent,  liberal.  Can  we  not  too  easily  get 
to  longing  for  finer  bread,  so  to  say,  than  can  be 
made  of  wheat,  and  was  it  not  drawing  matters 
a  little  superfine,  not  to  say  finical,  for  the  author 
of  Job  to  assume  that  such  a  comely  structure 
lay  open  to  attack  at  all  ? 

I  will  answer  this  natural  question  first  by 
bringing  up  the  charge  that  is  most  salient  and 
obvious,  though  not  the  most  vital,  not  the  central 
attack.  The  first  weak  spot  in  Wisdom  reveals 
itself  in  connection  with  the  very  literary  tissue, 

149 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

the  absolute,  uncompromising  mashal  form  that 
the  utterances  of  Wisdom  have  taken.  As  apho- 
risms they  have  been  moulded  and  filed  into  abso- 
lute truths;  and  there  they  stand,  sheer  unbending 
assertion,  needing  no  proof  but  native  insight,  and 
tolerating  no  objection  or  question.  Now  when 
we  come  to  think  of  it,  here  is  a  chance  not  only 
for  the  universal  truth  and  the  truism,  but  also  for 
the  half-truth,  to  get  in  its  work.  To  quote  again 
from  Mr.  Morley's  essay,  already  referred  to: 
"The  truism  and  the  commonplace  may  be  stated 
in  a  form  so  fresh,  so  pungent,  and  free  from  triv- 
iality, as  to  have  all  the  force  of  a  new  discovery. 
Hence  the  need  for  a  caution,  that  few  maxims 
are  to  be  taken  without  qualification.  They  seek 
after  sharpness  of  impression  by  excluding  one 
side  of  the  matter  and  exaggerating  another,  and 
most  aphorisms  are  to  be  read  as  subject  to  all 
sorts  of  limits,  conditions,  and  corrections." l 

We  recall,  too,  Lord  Bacon's  remark,  that  "no 
man  can  suffice,  nor  in  reason  will  attempt,  to 
write  aphorisms,  but  he  that  is  sound  and 
grounded."  Now  this  is  what  we  mean  by  a  half- 
truth:  a  truth  wherein  one  side  is  asserted  with 
all  absoluteness  and  vigor,  while  the  other  side, 
unstated,  is  left  to  the  occasion,  or  to  the  general 

1  Morley,  Studies  in  Literature,  p.  59. 
150 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

key  of  presupposition  in  which  the  truth  moves, 
to  supply.  A  familiar  classic  example  is  our 
Lord's  precept,  "Whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on 
thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also;" 
where  the  whole  presupposed  strain  of  character, 
namely  of  stedfast  love  even  to  enemies,  is  impli- 
citly relied  upon  to  supply  the  silent  half  and 
make  the  truth  balance  up  even.  We  know  how 
much  questioning,  even  as  it  is,  the  precept  has 
caused.  Now  suppose  men  should  rest  in  such 
a  half-truth  as  if  it  were  a  whole  one,  or  suppose 
they  have  not  the  right  key  of  presupposition  to 
unlock  and  supplement  it,  —  well,  we  can  easily 
see  there  is  chance  of  mischief  there.  The  half- 
truth  has  its  valuable  uses,  more  valuable  as  it  is 
more  important;  it  gains  access  by  its  very  para- 
dox, where  a  truism,  or  a  fully  balanced  statement, 
would  not  even  rouse  attention;  but  like  the 
"dark  sayings"  of  which  we  were  speaking  in  a 
former  chapter,  it  must  have  the  right  coefficient 
of  spiritual  sympathy  and  insight  to  appeal  to  in 
the  hearer,  otherwise  it  is  lamed  and  crippled, 
and  may  be  abused.  The  man  who  receives  and 
acts  upon  it,  no  less  than  the  man  who  originated 
it,  must  needs  be  "sound  and  grounded." 

Get  this  principle  to  operating  on  a  large  scale, 
and  the  results  may  be  very  portentous.  To  show 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

how  it  applies  on  a  scale  as  large  as  Wisdom 
itself,  I  can  make  my  way  best,  perhaps,  by  an 
illustration  or  two;  and  I  may  be  pardoned,  I 
trust,  if  the  illustrations  are  so  exaggerated  as 
to  verge  on  caricature. 

It  would  seem  as  if  any  hard-headed  devotee 
of  Wisdom,  any  one  who  had  the  uncolored 
truth  of  things  at  heart,  must  have  been  brought 
to  pause,  at  least  momentarily,  on  reading  in  the 
Philistine  words  of  Agur  such  a  mashal  as  this:  — 

"The  eye  that  mocketh  at  his  father, 
And  despiseth  to  obey  his  mother, 
The  ravens  of  the  valley  shall  pick  it  out, 
And  the  young  eagles  shall  eat  it."  l 

Here,  we  say,  is  a  grotesquely  violent  overstate- 
ment. In  its  animus,  indeed,  as  an  incitement 
to  filial  piety,  it  is  sane  and  cogent;  as  a  pre- 
diction, a  threat  of  consequences,  it  is  ludicrously 
savage  and  untrue*  Such  wild  threats  as  this  are 
apt  to  overshoot  their  mark;  they  leave  the  cul- 
prit unmoved  and  contemptuous.  When  I  was  a 
boy,  one  of  my  schoolmates,  who  lived  with  a  not 
over-fond  grandmother,  was  met  as  he  returned 
from  school  one  day  with  this  grandmotherly 
greeting,  "Johnny!  I'll  break  your  back  if  you 
don't  bring  me  a  pail  o'  water  this  minute!" 

1  Proverbs  xxx,  17. 
152 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

Small  boy  though  he  was,  he  could  discount  such 
a  threat;  his  only  response  was,  "Break  my  back, 
will  ye!  Break  my  back,  will  ye!"  and  he  made 
exaggeratedly  slow  time,  a  great  deal  more  than 
the  stipulated  minute,  in  getting  the  water.  The 
boy  was  not  unmindful,  in  the  abstract,  of  paren- 
tal authority;  but  when  it  came  distorted  with 
such  unreal  sanctions,  his  instinctive  impulse  was 
to  withdraw  into  his  own  will  and  do  as  he  pleased. 
One  step  above  these  smaller  instances  we  come 
upon  an  example  that  is  no  longer  a  caricature; 
an  example  so  large  that  it  fills  the  whole  system 
of  the  sages'  Wisdom  full.  Their  body  of  maxims, 
as  we  have  seen,  had  drawn  to  a  focus  and  centre, 
had  condensed  itself,  so  to  say,  into  one  compre- 
hensive mashal,  which  perhaps  we  may  express 
thus:  — 

"Man's  wisdom  is  to  fear  God  and  shun  evil; 
To  be  perverse  and  wicked  is  to  be  a  fool." 

That  is  an  eternally  true  law  of  life;  no  one  can 
get  round  that.  To  have  hewn  such  a  law  out  of 
the  virgin  forests  of  experience,  and  by  its  staunch 
maintenance  to  have  given  it  a  grip  on  high  and 
lowly,  is  glory  enough  for  one  strain  of  litera- 
ture. But  now  we  come  to  the  sanction,  to  the 
promised  or  threatened  consequences  of  things. 
These,  too,  are  given  with  absolute  assurance, 

153 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

leaving  no  room  for  gainsaying  or  exception,  nor 
taking  any  pains  to  define  terms.  Here  again  let 
us  try  to  make  a  mashal  to  express  it:  — 

"For  godliness  is  the  sure  way  to  success; 
But  wickedness  leadeth  to  certain  ruin." 

This,  we  must  confess,  is  a  very  sweeping  and 
venturesome  prophecy  to  make;  the  more  so  be- 
cause, as  we  have  seen,  the  sages  had  no  clearly 
discerned  immortality  to  help  them  out,  but  only 
the  bounded  inclosure  of  this  world  alone  to 
verify  it  in.  It  was  a  mundane  sequel  that  they 
had  in  view,  not  post-obituary. 

"Behold  the  righteous  shall  be  recompensed  in  the  earth: 
Much  more  the  wicked  and  the  sinner."  l 

With  such  a  prediction  given,  all  that  men  have 
to  do,  to  see  if  it  is  so,  is  to  make  a  simple  test 
of  fact  and  experience.  They  can  soon  ascer- 
tain, one  generation  will  suffice,  whether  they  can 
bank  surely  on  these  consequences,  so  absolutely 
affirmed,  or  not.  Preeminently  so,  by  reason  of 
the  sharper  definition  of  things.  As  Wisdom  devel- 
oped, the  counsels  of  the  sages  drew  to  an  ever  con- 
creter  and  more  tangible  centre,  defining  rewards 
and  penalties  in  terms  that  could  be  measured 
and  reckoned  and  discounted  like  a  fund;  so  that 
to  a  worldly-minded  business  man  the  emolument 

1  Proverbs  xi,  31. 
154 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

of  Wisdom  was  practically  some  aspect  of  wealth. 
That  is  what,  in  the  idiom  that  men  feel  rather 
than  analyze,  it  reduced  to.  When  Job  in  conse- 
quence of  his  piety  was  called  the  greatest  of 
the  sons  of  the  East,  what  was  meant  was  that 
he  was  the  richest.  The  marginal  reading  of  one 
of  the  later  Solomonic  proverbs  is:  — 

"The  reward  of  humility  and  the  fear  of  the  Lord 
Is  riches,  and  honor,  and  life."  1 

And  of  course  this  is  true,  when  it  strikes  deeply 
enough;  but  not  all  read  the  laws  of  being  deeply. 
Now  in  all  this,  with  whatever  warrant,  the 
sages  are  committing  their  disciples  to  a  colossal 
assumption  and  venture.  They  are  virtually  set- 
ting men  to  embarking  in  speculative  values, 
investing  their  life,  their  godliness,  so  to  say, 
for  reward.  And  soon  men  will  be  coming  back 
on  them  for  dividends,  and  grumbling  if  these 
are  not  forthcoming;  or  if  men  manage  to  get 
the  same  blessing  of  prosperity  and  success  in 
another  way,  they  may  seem  to  prove  the  whole 
scheme  of  Wisdom  to  be  a  beautiful  but  unprac- 
tical sentiment.  Such  is  the  dilemma  into  which 
the  theory  of  the  sages  is  drifting.  In  a  word,  it  is 
betraying  the  weakness  of  the  half-truth.  While 
the  principles  and  definition  of  Wisdom  are  un- 

1  Proverbs  xxii,  4. 
155 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

shakably  sound,  its   sanctions,    its   promises   of 
reward  and  threats  of  retribution,  are  on  trial. 

Such  is  the  felt  state  of  things  when  the  writer 
of  the  Book  of  Job,  his  spiritual  being  taking 
alarm,  pens  his  marvellously  searching  story  of 
the  patriarch  of  Uz.  The  sages'  cherished  struc- 
ture of  counsel  and  warning,  so  carefully  built 
together  out  of  the  lore  of  the  centuries,  so 
staunchly  defended  with  reasons,  is  beginning  to 
betray  its  vulnerable  points.  Men  have  already 
begun  to  discover  that  it  does  not  always  go  with 
either  righteous  or  wicked  as  the  wise  have  pre- 
dicted it  would.  On  the  one  hand,  the  righteous, 
instead  of  floating  sweetly  on  to  prosperity,  are 
plagued  every  day,  subject  to  disappointments 
outer  and  inner;  and  on  the  other  hand,  the 
wicked  have  so  many  times  been  observed  to 
be  as  prosperous  as  heart  could  wish  that  a 
formidable  array  of  exceptions  is  invading  the 
general  rule.  Several  of  the  Psalms,  notably  the 
seventeenth,  the  thirty-seventh,  the  forty-ninth, 
and  the  seventy-third,  concern  themselves  with  the 
puzzling  anomaly,  for  the  most  part  as  it  relates 
to  the  prosperous  wicked;  but  they  do  not  get 
far  enough  to  call  the  principle  itself  in  question. 
They  adopt  rather  such  an  explanation  as  will 
keep  the  case  still  within  the  rule;  as  for  instance, 

156 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

in  the  thirty-seventh,  in  the  thought  that  the  tri- 
umph of  the  wicked  is  short-lived,  and  so  not  a 
real  exception;  and  in  the  seventy-third,  in  the 
thought  that  though  the  wicked  may  become 
hoary  in  their  wickedness,  and  even  have  no  pangs 
in  their  death,  yet  God  has  set  their  feet  in  slip- 
pery places,  and  when  the  false,  fond  dream  of 
their  evil  life  is  over,  they  will  be  utterly  consumed 
with  terrors.  This  explanation  of  things  becomes 
violent,  bitter,  almost  frantic,  in  the  words  of  the 
friends  of  Job,  as  they  try  to  make  their  indu- 
rated theory  good  against  the  clear-seeing,  stur- 
dily honest  patriarch;  nay,  and  they  reduce  it  to 
utter  absurdity  in  their  desperate  attempt  to  prove 
that  he  is  suffering  for  his  wickedness,  and  so  is  no 
exception  to  the  rule.  Their  half-truth  has  become 
to  them  a  tyranny  and  a  snare. 

As  related  to  the  afflicted  righteous,  the  grand 
exception  to  the  Wisdom  dogma  is  embodied  in 
the  person  of  Job  himself,  whose  case  exhibits 
the  anomaly  in  its  ideally  extreme  type.  Here, 
by  the  conditions  of  the  problem,  is  a  man  whose 
life  is  the  ripest  fruitage  of  wisdom :  a  man  perfect 
and  upright,  who  fears  God  and  shuns  evil.  You 
cannot  conceive  a  completer  exemplification  of 
Wisdom;  God  Himself  owns  it.  For  a  time,  after 
the  simple  old  patriarchal  tradition,  the  reward 

157 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

follows  along  with  the  life:  Job  has  flocks  and 
herds,  sons  and  daughters,  a  great,  happy  house- 
hold, honors  and  riches  beyond  all  the  sons  of  the 
East,  and  troops  of  friends.  Then  in  one  day  all 
these  are  taken,  and  in  one  more  day  a  foul  and 
deadly  disease,  elephantiasis,  falling  upon  him, 
proclaims  to  all  the  world  what  has  always  been 
regarded  as  the  most  direct  retributive  visitation 
of  God.  There  is  no  doubt  of  it;  here  are  the 
distinctive  marks  of  divine  wrath. 

All  this  evinces  the  design  of  the  writer  so  to  por- 
tray the  huge  anomaly  that  it  may  be  owned  and 
resolved,  once  for  all  and  through  and  through. 
It  has  long  enough  been  swaying  loose  in  the  hands 
of  self-blinded  theorists;  has  been  explained  and 
refined  away  until  the  theory  has  well-nigh  suffered 
the  fate  described  in  the  Hezekian  proverb: 

"  The  legs  of  the  lame  hang  loose; 
So  is  a  mashal  in  the  mouth  of  fools;"  l 

until  indeed  it  is  in  danger  of  hurting  the  whole 
cause  of  sane  Wisdom,  —  as  that  other  Hezekian 
word  puts  it,  — 

"A  thorn  goeth  up  into  the  hand  of  a  drunkard: 
So  is  a  mashal  in  the  mouth  of  fools."  2 

Job  himself  punctures  the  outworn  theory  by 
maintaining  his  integrity  in  the  face  of  his  friends* 

1  Proverbs  xxvi,  7.  2  Proverbs  xxvi,  9. 

I58 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

advocacy  of  it;  until  he  unearths  the  impervious- 
ness  to  fact,  the  sheer  fatuity  that  is  blinding 
them :  — 

"But  you  —  all  of  you  —  return  ye!  and  come  now! 
For  I  shall  not  find  a  wise  man  among  you."  l 

For  in  the  teeth  of  that  absolutely  held  doctrine 
that  the  righteous  are  sure  of  recompense  in  the 
earth,  this  embodied  case  of  Job  asserts  in  brave, 
defiant  way  that  as  a  matter  of  plain  fact  the 
righteous,  —  nay,  the  superlatively,  conspicuously 
righteous  —  are  just  as  liable  to  suffer  affliction 
as  the  wicked.  Nor  this  alone.  The  plot  of  the 
book  is  so  ordered  that  this  thing  can  be  laid  to 
no  one  but  God.  As  far  as  Job  and  the  friends 
can  see,  God  is  bestirring  Himself  to  punish  an 
unendurable  enormity  of  evil.  It  is  to  them  as 
if  the  powers  of  the  universe  were  laying  a  fiery 
hand  on  a  man's  life  and  saying,  Here  is  a  plague- 
spot,  here  is  the  thing  that  deserves  wrath  and 
ruin.  And  yet,  if  you  lay  it  to  Him,  as  in  your 
Wisdom  theory  you  are  bound  to  do,  you  are  put- 
ting God  Himself  in  ugly  case:  you  are  making 
Him  out  to  be  not  a  just,  wise,  sympathetic  Judge, 
but  a  vindictive,  malignant  Persecutor  of  His  own 
handiwork.  To  show  all  this,  and  somehow  to  set 
things  right,  is  the  evident  design  of  the  author  of 

1  Job  xvii,  10. 
159 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

the  book.  Ah,  this  Book  of  Job  ploughs  deep;  it 
unearths  the  hoary  old  half-truth  which  has  got 
out  of  touch  with  life,  and  in  its  magnificent  effort, 
by  reinstating  the  living  vital  half,  to  make  the 
truth  a  whole  one,  it  invades  the  very  presence- 
chamber  of  the  divine  with  the  importunate  claim 
of  human  love  and  friendship. 

The  contest  between  Job  and  his  friends  is  a 
battle  royal  between  fact  and  theory.  The  friends 
all,  and  Job  too,  are  of  the  sages'  guild.  They 
have  come  from  the  Wisdom  universities  of  vari- 
ous lands  with  their  theory  already  made  and 
gray  with  age,  the  same  theory  that  Job  himself 
has  hitherto  held;  and  their  whole  endeavor,  from 
beginning  to  end,  is  to  maintain  that  the  theory 
still  holds  true,  and  that  in  accordance  with  the 
rule  Job  is  afflicted  not  in  spite  of  being  right- 
eous, but  because  he  is  wicked.  They  will  not 
admit  that  the  rule  can  have  a  single  exception. 
"Bethink  thee  now,"  says  Eliphaz  at  the  outset, — 

"who  that  was  guiltless  hath  perished, 
And  where  have  the  upright  been  cut  off? 
As  I  have  seen,  —  they  that  plough  iniquity, 
And  that  sow  wickedness,  reap  the  same."  ' 

And  the  whole  record  of  their  reiterated  onslaughts 
is  simply  the  history  of  the  shifts  they  are  at  to 

1  Job  iv,  7,  8. 

160 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

maintain  their  rigid  theory.  They  begin  gently 
and  courteously,  a  little  reluctant,  it  would  seem, 
to  come  at  close  grips  with  fact;  talk  a  good  deal, 
all  of  them,  like  Calvinists  before  Calvin,  of  the 
innate  depravity  of  human  nature,  which  virtually 
makes  out  every  man,  by  the  bare  fact  of  being 
mortal,  impure  enough,  wicked  enough,  to  deserve 
the  utmost  punishment  God  sees  fit  to  inflict; 
recount  cases  of  wicked  men  who  for  a  time 
seemed  rooted  in  prosperity  and  then  were  sud- 
denly cut  off";  lay  part  of  Job's  affliction  on  his 
sons,  who  are  no  longer  alive  to  answer  for  them- 
selves ;  conjecture  that  Job  has  been  tampering 
with  his  conscience,  that  he  has  taken  occasion 
to  sin  when  God  was  not  looking,  and  so  has  got 
his  conscience  into  so  seared  and  calloused  a  state 
that  when  he  says  he  is  righteous  he  really  does 
not  know  what  it  is  to  be  wicked;  and  finally,  as  a 
last  resort,  they  come  out  plumply  with  the  asser- 
tion that  Job,  through  his  servants  or  somehow, 
has  without  realizing  it  been  so  cruel  and  heart- 
less that  this  punishment  is  actually  too  good 
for  him.  Think  what  they  make  him  do  by  sheer 
inadvertence.  One  is  reminded  of  the  whimsical 
idea  that  De  Quincey  perpetrated  in  his  elaborate 
piece  of  fooling  on  Murder  as  a  Fine  Art.  "Once 
begin,"  he  says,  "on  this  downward  path,  you 

161 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

never  know  where  you  are  to  stop.  Many  a  man 
has  dated  his  ruin  from  some  murder  or  other  that 
perhaps  he  thought  little  of  at  the  time."  Any- 
thing, in  fact,  to  convict  Job  of  sin,  or  rather  to 
keep  intact  their  theory,  which  when  it  sees  the 
punishment  must  needs  infer  an  equivalence  in 
crime. 

And  so  the  friends  go  on,  manufacturing  facts 
and  explanations,  rashly  overstating  things  and 
increasing  in  violence  of  assertion,  until  they 
reduce  their  whole  case  to  an  absurdity.  If  the 
facts  will  not  bear  them  out,  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  facts.  There  is  a  story  of  a  certain  geolo- 
gist, eminent  for  his  advocacy  of  a  brilliant  theory 
of  glacial  or  lacustrine  action,  I  do  not  just  recall 
what.  This  geologist  was  staying,  along  with  a 
friend,  at  a  summer  hotel,  above  which  sloped  a 
green  mountain  side.  As  the  friend  was  out  early 
one  morning  for  a  walk,  he  observed  the  geologist 
industriously  carrying  small  boulders  and  pebbles 
down  the  mountain  side  and  depositing  them  at 
a  lower  level;  and  at  breakfast  asked  him  why 
he  had  done  so.  "Well,"  replied  the  geologist 
with  a  little  hesitation,  "  the  fact  is,  they  were  too 
high  up  to  suit  my  theory."  That  is  what  the  con- 
tention of  Job's  friends  virtually  means.  The  facts 
of  the  universe  are  too  high  up,  yes,  and  too  deep 

162 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

down,  to  square  with  the  Wisdom  theory  to  which 
they  have  committed  themselves;  and  they  are 
trying  to  manipulate  the  facts. 

Here,  in  passing,  I  must  needs  advert  to  the 
prevailing  notion  of  the  Book  of  Job;  which 
notion,  I  think,  obscures  the  book's  real  drift  by 
making  it  out  to  be  an  elaborate  debate,  or  theo- 
logical discussion,  on  the  question  of  God's  provi- 
dential dealings  with  men;  more  specifically,  why 
God  afflicts  the  righteous.  We  need  only  ask  our- 
selves how  such  a  postulated  debate  comes  out,  to 
see  how  unsufficing  this  interpretation  is.  We  in- 
terrogate the  friends:  Why  does  God  afflict  the 
righteous  ?  Their  strenuously  maintained  answer 
is,  "He  does  not;  He  afflicts  the  wicked,  even 
if  He  has  to  create  them  wicked  in  order  to  do 
it."  We  turn  to  Job:  "Why  does  God  afflict 
the  righteous?"  His  sturdy  answer  is,  "I  do  not 
know;  it  is  beyond  me;  I  would  give  anything, 
go  anywhere,  to  find  out;  I  only  know  it  is  a 
monstrous  fact."  And  when  at  last  we  turn  rever- 
ently to  interrogate  the  august  address  from  the 
whirlwind,  even  then,  all  the  answer  we  can 
deduce  is,  "God  knows,  doubtless,  but  He  will 
not  tell."  On  the  score  of  a  debate,  of  a  system, 
of  logic,  we  do  not  solve  the  problem.  There  is 

163 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

an  answer,  and  to  this  very  question;  but  it  is 
deeper  down;  it  rests  on  more  vital  elements;  it 
must  be  traced  through  a  different  literary  form; 
we  shall  see  it  later.  But  it  is  not  the  answer  of 
logic.  We  have  seen  where  the  friends'  inflexi- 
ble logic  lands  them.  It  is  the  answer  of  per- 
sonality. 

We  have  left  Job  waiting  all  this  time,  while  we 
disposed  of  the  friends  and  their  theories.  Return- 
ing to  him  now,  we  find  that  by  standing  stedfast 
on  the  bed-rock  of  fact,  of  things  as  they  are,  he 
has  been  disposing  of  them  himself.  They  beat 
against  him,  storming  and  foaming,  but  recede 
baffled,  like  the  waves  at  the  foot  of  a  mighty  cliff. 
To  all  their  assumptions  and  assertions  of  his 
wickedness  he. answers,  "But  I  am  not  wicked;  I 
have  not  sinned  to  deserve  it ;  if  any  one  is 
unrighteous  it  is  God,  not  I."  Amazing  boldness 
this,  so  to  arraign  his  Creator  and  censure  His 
ways;  but  in  this  very  judgment,  as  we  know,  he 
is,  though  not  aware  of  it,  entirely  at  one  with 
what  God  Himself  has  said  to  the  Accuser  in 
heaven.  "Hast  thou  considered  my  servant  Job, 
that  there  is  none  like  him  in  the  earth,  a  man  per- 
fect and  upright,  who  feareth  God  and  shunneth 
evil  ?  and  he  still  holdeth  fast  his  integrity,  though 

164 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

thou  didst  move  me  against  him,  to  destroy  him 
causelessly."  l  To  destroy  him  causelessly  —  it 
is  as  if  the  eternal  laws  of  being  were  turned 
squarely  around  and  were  working  in  inverse 
order.  And  this  mortal  has  discovered  the  fact, 
and  is  courageous  enough,  at  risk  of  immediate 
extinction,  to  proclaim  it. 

There  is  far  more  involved  here  than  the  in- 
sight of  one  honest  man,  or  the  decision  of  a  doc- 
trinal debate.  For  the  whole  growing  structure  of 
Wisdom,  too,  it  is  endlessly  far-reaching.  Go  back 
to  the  sages'  initial  quest  of  truth;  consider  how, 
in  pursuance  of  the  very  basal  assumption  of  that 
scientific  impulse  which  has  dared  to  launch  out 
from  the  instructions  of  priests  and  the  oracles 
of  prophets,  we  find  here  acknowledged  the  fact 
that  the  reverent  wise  man,  holding  firmly  to  his 
sense  of  truth,  has  eyes  to  see  things  as  they  are. 
His  native  manhood  powers,  without  bolstering 
from  mystic  communications,  can  win  to  the 
truth  of  things,  can  be  an  authentic  vehicle  of 
revelation.  That  is  a  great  thing  to  know.  It  gives 
wisdom,  science,  honest  research,  a  function  in 
God's  great  economy  of  the  world;  it  owns  hu- 
man nature  to  be  not  fundamentally  crooked 
and  depraved,  but  essentially  straight-seeing  and 

1  Job  ii,  3. 

165 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

sound.  Have  we  ever  thought  what  tremendous 
significance  lies  in  that  divine  verdict  at  the  end, 
given  after  the  friends  have  labored  to  curry 
God's  favor  by  defending  Him  through  thick  and 
thin,  and  after  Job,  with  his  life  in  his  hand,  has 
sublimely  dared  to  call  his  Creator  to  stern  ac- 
count: "For  ye  have  not  spoken  concerning  me 
that  which  is  right,  as  my  servant  Job  hath."  l  It 
is  the  Divine  verdict  on  the  words  of  a  sincere 
man;  but  more:  it  is  the  Divine  ratification  of 
the  most  originative  freedom  of  Wisdom. 

Returning,  however,  from  this  high  considera- 
tion, let  us  see  how  Job  is  impressed  with  the 
existing  situation  of  things,  as  he  wages  his  stal- 
wart battle  with  his  friends.  They  pass  their  well- 
seasoned  Wisdom  philosophy  in  ordered  array 
before  him ;  their  philosophy,  which  also  has 
hitherto  been  his.  It  is  a  coherent,  logical,  self- 
consistent  system.  In  fact,  the  most  adequate 
summary  of  straight  Wisdom  that  we  have,  as  a 
body  of  doctrine  and  as  a  motived  unity,  is  gath- 
ered from  the  utterances  of  these  friends  of  Job. 
They  are  ripe  scholars  ;  they  have  gathered  store 
of  thought  from  the  lore  of  the  ancients,  and 
meditated  it  into  a  philosophy  of  life.  But  now, 
as  the  venerable  maxims  are  pressed  upon  him 

1  Job  xlii,  8. 
1 66 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

anew,  the  first  thing  that  strikes  Job  is  that  they 
are  strangely  insipid;  there  is  no  more  savor  in 
them  than  in  the  white  of  an  egg  or  an  unsalted 
potato.  True  enough  they  are,  no  doubt,  in  the 
abstract,  but  truisms,  so  flat  and  stale;  the  ding- 
dong  of  the  same  old  bell,  —  "Who  knoweth  not 
things  like  these  ?"  he  says, — 

"And  common  is  the  commonplace, 
And  vacant  chaff  well  meant  for  grain."  l 

From  this  it  does  not  take  long  for  him  to  realize 
that  the  old  aphorisms  are  remote  from  the  pre- 
sent case;  so  inapplicable,  in  fact,  as  to  be  virtu- 
ally false, — 

"Your  wise  maxims  [he  says]  are  proverbs  of  ashes; 
Your  bulwarks  turn  to  bulwarks  of  clay."  2 

The  friends'  theory  has  turned  against  them,  like 
the  thorn  going  up  into  the  hand  of  the  drunkard; 
and  they,  in  sticking  so  blindly  to  it,  are  so  near 
incurring  the  reproach  of  the  mashal  in  the  mouth 
of  fools  that  he  soon  despairs  of  finding  a  wise  man 
among  them. 

What  does  it  all  mean  ?  It  means  that  the  time 
has  come  for  a  new  coordination  of  Wisdom  with 
life.  The  Wisdom  that  they  are  urging  upon 
him,  logical  as  it  is,  is  the  kind  of  counsel  that  a 
scholar  can  sit  in  his  library  and  compose  by  the 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  vi.  *  Job  xiii,  12. 

167 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

mile;  it  has  not  stirred  their  blood,  or  laid  hold 
on  the  tender  chords  of  their  being. 

"I  also  [he  says]  could  speak  as  you  do, 
Were  your  soul  in  my  soul's  stead; 
I  could  compose  words  against  you; 
And  I  could  shake  my  head  over  you; 
I  could  strengthen  you  —  with  my  mouth, 
And  my  lip-sympathy  could  sustain  you."  * 

The  deep  truth  of  the  case  is,  he  has  been,  as  the 
phrase  is,  "salted  by  fire,"  while  they  have  not; 
has  been  brought  inward  by  sharp  suffering  to 
gaze  on  life  at  first  hand;  and  the  experience  has 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  need  of  a  new  and  more 
vital  Wisdom.  Things  are  falling  into  a  larger  rela- 
tion and  proportion.  He  knows  this  is  so,  and 
that  in  maintaining  his  ways  to  God's  face  he  is 
right.  Bewildered  at  first  and  groping,  he  comes 
out  soon  on  the  table-lands  of  vision.  They  urge 
that  resentment  and  the  sinful  crook  in  his  nature 
have  distorted  his  view:  no,  he  says,  I  can  see 
as  straight  as  ever  I  could.  They  urge  that  his 
conscience  is  seared  and  dead:  no,  he  says,  I  can 
discern  good  and  evil,  true  and  false,  and  feel  them 
as  keenly  as  ever.  They  urge  that  he  is  cherish- 
ing the  way  of  wickedness  and  scoffing,  and  that 
his  burning  words  are  bringing  piety  to  nought: 

1  Job  xvi,  4,  5. 

1 68 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

no,  he  says,  my  whole  being  centres  in  the  supreme 
longing  to  find  God,  and  as  for  the  counsel  of  the 
wicked,  be  it  far  from  me.  A  monstrous  wrong 
has  been  done  me  somehow,  somewhere,  — 

"Yet  not  for  any  violence  in  my  hands; 
And  my  prayer  too  is  pure."  1 

They,  on  the  other  hand,  so  solicitous  for  piety 
and  purity,  are  turning  heartlessly  against  their 
friend  in  his  sorest  need;  and  for  the  sake  of  their 
dogmatic  system  they  can  be  blind  to  what  is 
honest  and  godlike  in  him.  Their  theoretic  Wis- 
dom has  brought  them  far,  too  far;  it  has  hard- 
ened into  an  unprogressive,  unmerciful  system. 
From  being  a  flexible  inquiry  into  the  phenomena 
of  life,  experience,  conduct,  as  it  was  to  start  with, 
it  has  developed  into  an  orthodoxy,  with  all  the 
rigidity,  all  the  thick-and-thin  logic,  all  the  cold- 
blooded intolerance  of  an  orthodoxy.  The  warm 
throb  of  the  heart,  the  free  play  of  sympathy 
between  man  and  man,  is  drying  up  into  intel- 
lectualism  and  erudition.  And  therefore  its  doom 
is  in  sight.  Wisdom  must  thrill  to  new  and  more 
humane  motions  of  life,  or  she  cannot  survive. 

The  inveterate  dominance  of  the  half-truth 
has  yielded  to  the  attack  made  upon  it  by  the 
author  of  Job.  It  will  nevermore  be  held  by  a 

1  Job  xvi,  17. 
169 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

large-hearted  sage  that  you  can  measure  a  man's 
piety  by  his  prosperity,  or  his  wickedness  by  his 
woe.  The  time  has  passed  for  men  to  infer  the 
inner  from  the  outer.  We  shall  hear  the  next 
great  sage,  Ecclesiastes,  numbering  among  the 
vanities  that  we  must  discount,  "that  there  are 
righteous  to  whom  it  befalleth  according  to  the 
work  of  the  wicked,  and  that  there  are  wicked  to 
whom  it  befalleth  according  to  the  work  of  the 
righteous,"  l  and  fitting  his  wise,  cheery  counsel 
to  the  undeniable  fact.  No:  the  wisdom  of  life 
must  be  made  up  on  other,  more  inner  grounds. 

II 

All  this,  however,  has  belonged  to  the  outworks. 
It  is  an  attack  searching  and  vital  indeed,  but 
not  the  most  organic,  not  what  I  call  the  attack 
by  centre.  This  central  attack,  to  be  sure,  grows 
directly  out  of  it;  and  has  been  dimly  shadowed 
in  the  hard  odium  theologicum,  the  cold  steely 
intellectualism,  of  Job's  friends.  It  resolves  itself 
into  the  answer  to  the  question,  What  fruits  does 
such  Wisdom  as  theirs  bear  ?  "  By  their  fruits  ye 
shall  know  them,"  was  our  Lord's  word;  and 
there  is  no  end  to  the  depth  of  its  application. 
WTiat  kind  of  life,  what  tone  of  principle,  senti- 

1  Ecclesiastes  viii,  14. 
I/O 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

ment,  character,  do  those  wise  counsels  of  sages, 
from  Solomon  to  Hezekiah,  tend  to  produce  ? 

The  half-truth  emerges  again.  You  coordinate 
piety  infallibly  with  worldly  success,  and  wicked- 
ness with  failure,  and  the  way  of  life  becomes 
perilously  clear.  It  reduces  to  the  simple  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  ends.  Piety,  the  fear  of  the  Lord, 
integrity,  thus  becomes  secondary,  not  supreme. 
It  is  in  fact  an  investment  put  forth  with  a  view 
to  profit,  to  dividends.  Satan,  the  spirit  who  came 
among  the  sons  of  God  "from  roaming  to  and  fro 
in  the  earth,  and  from  walking  up  and  down  in 
it,"  was  not  slow  to  discover  this.  He  is  no  fool, 
though  his  wisdom  is  not  synonymous  with  piety. 
He  it  was  who  delivered  this  central  attack  on  the 
motives  and  tendencies  of  Wisdom.  He  too,  from 
his  own  mocking  point  of  view,  had  considered 
God's  favorite  servant  Job,  so  good,  so  happy, 
so  wealthy;  perhaps  he  was  a  little  tired  of  hear- 
ing Aristides  always  called  the  Just.  At  any  rate, 
he  formed  his  own  conclusion,  and  from  the  re- 
sponse it  elicited,  it  proved  to  be  a  very  searching 
one.  "  Doth  Job  fear  God  for  nought  ?  Hast  Thou 
not  Thyself  set  a  hedge  about  him,  and  about  his 
house,  and  about  all  that  is  his,  on  every  side? 
Thou  hast  blessed  the  work  of  his  hands,  and 
his  property  is  spread  out  in  the  land.  But  put 

171 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

forth  now  Thy  hand,  and  touch  all  that  he  hath, 
—  and  see  if  he  will  not  renounce  Thee,  to  Thy 
face."  *  As  much  as  to  say,  Job  knows  passing 
well  where  all  those  good  things  come  from,  and 
how  they  come;  and  as  a  slangster  would  say,  he 
is  not  doing  all  this  righteousness  for  fun;  or  as 
modern  business,  in  the  same  spirit,  is  even  now 
saying,  "We  are  not  in  this  enterprise,  you  under- 
stand, for  our  health."  In  other  words,  Wisdom  is 
a  business,  organized  and  well-paying;  it  imposes 
easy  work  and  brings  handsome  returns.  That 
is  what,  by  recognized  Divine  ordinance,  it  has 
come  to  be.  But  that  it  is  not  also  something 
more  inward,  an  essential  strain  of  manhood,  an 
integrity  which  is  its  own  intrinsic  reward  and 
excuse  for  being,  without  reference  to  the  pay  it 
earns,  —  well,  that  remains  to  be  seen.  It  is  not 
fully  tested  yet.  Its  way  has  hitherto  been  too 
clear  and  calculable,  perhaps,  and  too  certainly 
banked  upon,  for  its  own  deepest  good.  A  Satan 
may  believe  that  godliness  is  not  an  intrinsic 
thing;  but  even  the  Satanic  sneer  contains  the 
implication  that  it  ought  to  be.  So  Wisdom  is  in 
need  of  a  thorough  sifting,  to  determine  what  its 
essential  motive  and  fibre  are.  If  it  is  a  com- 
mercialism, a  traffic,  a  bargain,  the  world  cannot 

1  Job  i,  10,  11. 
172 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

afford  not  to  know  it.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
a  thing  which  is  profaned  by  being  bought  or  sold, 
the  whole  ideal  of  manhood  is  infinitely  enlarged 
and  enriched  by  knowing  the  truth  of  that. 

But  this  latter  truth  does  not  come  to  light  by 
logic;  it  is  not  a  thing  reasoned  out  and  demon- 
strated. It  must  come  up  from  the  very  core  and 
abysm  of  personality;  we  must  know  by  actual  ex- 
periment whether  or  not  a  man — or  rather  man- 
hood—  has  it  in  him  to  cling  to  a  divine  ideal  if  he 
is  not  paid  for  it  at  all.  And  if  we  come  further 
to  know  that  even  with  payment  of  affliction,  even 
with  the  sanctions  of  Wisdom  working  in  inverse 
order,  man  remains  perfect  and  upright  in  scorn 
of  consequence,  the  glory  of  manhood,  God's  cre- 
ation, is  all  the  greater.  Such  is  the  tremendous 
issue  involved  in  this  trial  of  Job.  The  experi- 
ment is  worth  making;  the  Lord  Himself  owns 
that;  hazardous  indeed,  and  committing  Him  to 
a  temporary  injustice,  but  containing  such  high 
possibilities  if  the  Creator's  faith  in  His  own  han- 
diwork wins,  that  the  risk  may  well  be  taken.  So 
the  wager  is  made,  and  Job,  utterly  unaware  how 
important  his  conduct  is  in  the  sight  of  heaven 
and  earth,  is  handed  over  to  Satan  for  the  ordeal. 

For  the  attack  on  the  central  motive  of  Wisdom, 
as  up  to  this  time  it  has  been  held  and  taught, 

173 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

the  author  of  this  book  has  employed  two  agencies: 
Satan  and  Job.  Our  inquiry  about  these  now,  we 
will  bear  in  mind,  deals  with  the  literary  values 
that  inhere  in  them.  There  may  or  may  not  be 
an  actual  personal  Devil;  there  may  or  may  not 
have  been  an  historical  Job;  with  these  questions 
we  are  not  concerned.  Nothing  would  be  gained 
by  answering  them;  it  would  be  a  positive  ob- 
scuring of  our  subject  to  bother  with  them  at  all. 
Rather,  as  we  see  an  author  here  trying  to  set 
forth  in  adequate  terms  a  great  crisis  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  manhood,  we  are  concerned  to  know  what 
he  had  it  in  his  heart  to  write,  what  pulsation  of 
reaction  and  criticism,  of  conviction  and  aggres- 
sive ideal,  found  expression  in  these  characters. 

in 

How  shall  we  image  to  ourselves,  in  the  light 
of  to-day,  this  Satan  of  the  Book  of  Job  ?  There 
are  no  data  here  for  regarding  him  as  a  fiend, 
whose  business  it  is  to  burn  and  flay  and  devour. 
He  does  indeed  handle  Job  with  exceeding  sever- 
ity; not,  however,  so  much  in  the  spirit  which 
delights  in  unmotived  cruelty,  as  in  the  spirit  of 
vivisection  for  scientific  purposes.  Nor  do  we  find 
here  anything  like  the  fancied  monster  of  mediae- 
val times,  with  horns  and  hoofs  and  tail,  —  a  gram- 

174 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

inivorous  devil  therefore,  as  the  naturalist  Cuvier 
pointed  out,  and  so  not  adapted  to  devour  men  at 
all.  Rather,  we  find  here  a  being  who  expresses 
some  animus,  some  strong  impulse  of  the  author's 
own  heart;  a  being  whose  sarcasm  and  severity  we 
can  almost  forgive  for  the  sake  of  the  grand  clear- 
ing of  ideals  that  he  brought  about.  The  issue  he 
raises  is  one  that  ought  to  be  raised,  and  that 
needs  his  agency;  so,  as  Goethe  says,  he  "  must  as 
devil  create."  In  other  words,  Satanism,  in  liter- 
ature and  in  the  world,  has  its  defensible  uses. 

Several  elements  of  his  contribution  to  the  sit- 
uation may  be  brought  out  by  a  bit  of  compar- 
ison, showing  how  the  Satan  idea  has  figured  in 
literature.  The  word  Satan,  originally  the  Satan, 
means  literally  the  Accuser.  To  indulge  in  a  bit  of 
metaphysics,  he  may  be  regarded  as  the  spirit  — 
wherever  he  works,  outside  or  in — who  has  a  sense 
for  the  seamy  and  vulnerable  side  of  things,  who 
delights  in  showing  up  the  weakness,  the  absurdity, 
the  sin.  We  all  have  some  share  of  such  critical 
tendency,  and  in  some  it  almost  overbalances  the 
sense  for  the  soul  of  good  in  things.  We  set  that 
tendency  at  work  on  things  in  life  or  thought  that 
seem  to  us  distorted  or  askew  or  out  of  proportion; 
it  is  the  negative  side  of  our  impulse  to  balance 
things  up  and  set  them  right.  The  author  of  this 

175 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

Book  of  Job  has  an  indignant  sense  that  some- 
how men's  ideas  of  Wisdom  have  got  out  of  true. 
They  have  alloyed  it  with  the  wrong  motive.  And 
now,  instead  of  reasoning  out  this  surge  of  indig- 
nation into  propositions,  this  author  has  embodied 
it  in  a  tale,  projecting  the  initial  criticism  into  a 
personality  who  can  urge  his  accusations  in  char- 
acter. By  this  means  we  gain  some  advantages. 
We  do  not  have  to  take  up  with  unmixed  Satan- 
ism; we  can  separate  the  spirit  that  denies  from 
the  spirit  that  affirms,  and  we  can  estimate  his 
denials  at  their  true  value. 

Goethe,  who  modelled  his  Mephistopheles  on 
this  Satan,  has  interpreted  him  very  audaciously. 
He  figures  him  as  a  waggish,  mocking  rascal; 
his  name  for  him  is  "Schalk,"  rogue;  and  he 
represents  him  as  a  rather  amusing,  vivacious  imp, 
whom  the  Lord  Himself  does  not  more  than  half 
hate.  Well,  Goethe  has  got  hold  of  one  important 
element.  He  emphasizes  the  nonchalance  with 
which  the  Satan  can  contemplate  an  evil  without 
being  disturbed  by  it.  There  is  no  fanaticism 
of  bigotry  in  him  to  warp  his  keen,  steely  view 
of  things.  It  makes  no  difference  to  Satan,  any 
more  than  to  Mephistopheles,  whether  Job  wins 
or  the  Lord;  he  loses  his  wager,  that  is  all;  his 
pulse  would  beat  just  as  calmly  if  the  whole  Wis- 

176 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

dom  structure  were  in  ruins.  He  represents,  in 
short,  what  we  may  call  the  humorous  element  of 
the  situation;  for  scholars  say  humor  arises,  intel- 
lectually, from  a  sense  of  the  contrast  between 
what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,  the  sense  of  in- 
congruity. Humor  takes  various  phases  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  of  the  man :  from  geniality  all 
the  way  to  cynicism.  And  we  may  truly  say  we 
have  the  humorous  feeling  here,  though  in  the 
German  portrayal  it  is  more  genial  and  lambent. 
The  Hebrew  humor,  coexisting  with  a  nature 
otherwise  so  intensely  earnest,  has  to  contain  a 
strain  of  sarcasm;  it  is  not  the  comrade  sort  which 
laughs  with  men  —  it  laughs  at  them.  It  is  not 
kindly  with  fools,  as  was  Shakespeare,  but  con- 
temptuous of  them.  We  can  get  an  idea  of  its 
spirit  here  in  Job  from  what  Carlyle  desiderates 
as  a  means  to  clear  away  the  fogs  and  malarias 
of  thought:  "One  right  peal  of  concrete  laughter 
at  some  convicted  flesh-and-blood  absurdity,  one 
burst  of  noble  indignation  at  some  injustice  or 
depravity,  rubbing  elbows  with  us  on  this  solid 
Earth." » 

A  touch  of  that  satiric  laughter  is  here,  in  the 
Satan,  and  its  subject  is  the  same,  "a  convicted 
flesh-and-blood  absurdity."  And  after  all,  is  not 

1  Carlyle,  Life  of  John  Sterling,  p.  57. 
177 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

a  sense  of  humor  needed  sometimes  to  limber  up 
things  that  have  become  rigid  and  austere  and 
get  them  into  proportion  again  ?  It  is  a  saving 
virtue,  this  sense  of  humor,  like  the  salt  with  which 
our  speech  of  grace  should  be  seasoned.  And  it 
is  needed  here  in  Job,  to  give  those  solemn  old 
friends  a  prod,  and  dislodge  from  its  tyranny 
over  our  minds  that  philosophy  of  Wisdom  which 
has  congealed  into  a  cold-blooded,  heartless  dog- 
matism. How  shall  those  sanctimonious,  wagging 
gray  beards  be  tweaked  a  little,  and  their  Wis- 
dom be  thawed  into  warm  and  genial  life  ?  The 
way  that  is  taken,  this  Satanic  mockery,  contains 
humor  as  well  as  earnest;  it  punctures  by  laughter 
and  exposure  of  the  absurd. 

But  "noble  indignation,"  too,  is  not  lacking 
here,  the  indignation  of  an  outraged  and  dis- 
credited manhood;  embodied  not  so  much  in  the 
Satan  himself,  perhaps,  as  in  the  emotion  which 
stung  the  author  to  create  such  an  agency  for  his 
purpose.  He  feels  that  the  essence  of  Wisdom  is 
being  outraged  and  vulgarized;  that  men  have 
gazed  at  the  brilliant  rewards  of  Wisdom  until 
they  are  dazed  and  color-blind;  that  the  cold 
intellectualism  of  their  learning  has  atrophied  that 
free  play  of  sympathy  and  human  love  which 
should  be  the  very  bloom  and  fruitage  of  their 
178 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

knowledge.  This  deep  indignation  may  be  re- 
garded as  one  pulsation  in  a  kind  of  Satanism, 
the  accusing  spirit  roused  to  sharp  reaction.  It  is 
like  what  Tennyson  describes  of  his  own  recovery 
from  the  deadness  of  materialistic  doubt:  — 

"If  e'er  when  faith  had  fall'n  asleep, 
I  heard  a  voice  'believe  no  more' 
And  heard  an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep; 

"  A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 

The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answer'd  'I  have  felt.'"  1 

That  is  it.  Do  not  be  shocked  if  I  say,  one  aspect 
of  this  Satan  creation  looks  uncommonly  like  the 
uprise  of  the  higher  manhood  put  into  remon- 
strant embodiment.  It  is  the  man  in  wrath  stand- 
ing up  in  an  indignant  human  heart  and  answer- 
ing, "I  have  felt;"  I  have  felt  what  ought  to  be 
in  you  a  higher  throb  of  Wisdom,  and  that  deep 
pulsation  urges  me  to  protest  against  that  sordid 
commercialism  which  is  making  your  standard 
of  living  synonymous  with  driving  a  bargain.  Life 
is  not  a  thing  to  be  bought  and  sold.  And  let  us 
dare  to  say,  this  protest,  with  whatever  of  Satan- 
ism is  in  it,  is  salutary,  uplifting;  it  goes  far  to 
transform  this  Satan  into  authentic  fellowship 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cxxiv. 
179 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

with  the  sons  of  God  among  whom  he  so  uncere- 
moniously appears. 

What  became  of  the  Satan  after  he  lost  his  wager, 
the  author  does  not  tell  us.  Did  he  go  forth  on 
his  travels  again,  searching  for  faults  and  flaws 
in  the  order  of  things,  or  did  he  subside  into 
silence  and  acquiescence,  his  occupation  gone  ? 
Let  me  venture,  as  a  last  comparison,  to  adduce 
from  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  story  of  "  Mark- 
heim"  what  may  be  called  an  up-to-date  devil, 
showing,  in  a  conception  more  audacious  yet  not 
less  suggestive  than  that  of  Goethe's,  what  in 
these  latest  days  has  been  made  of  Satanism  as 
a  tempting  spirit  insinuating  itself  into  human 
character. 

Markheim,  the  story  goes,  a  spendthrift  in  des- 
perate straits  for  money,  had  just  murdered  in  his 
shop  an  old  curio  dealer,  and  was  proceeding  to 
ransack  the  premises  for  money  and  jewels;  when 
suddenly  a  stranger,  affable  and  quite  ordinary, 
entered  the  room  where  he  was.  "Markheim 
stood  and  gazed  at  him  [the  story  relates]  with  all 
his  eyes.  Perhaps  there  was  a  film  upon  his  sight, 
but  the  outlines  of  the  newcomer  seemed  to  change 
and  waver  like  those  of  the  idols  in  the  wavering 
candle-light  of  the  shop;  and  at  times  he  thought 
he  knew  him;  and  at  times  he  thought  he  bore 

180 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

a  likeness  to  himself;  and  always,  like  a  lump  of 
living  terror,  there  lay  in  his  bosom  the  convic- 
tion that  this  thing  was  not  of  the  earth  and  not 
of  God." 

This  mysterious  being,  quite  soothing  Mark- 
heim's  riotous  nerves  by  his  easy  comradery,  sug- 
gests to  him,  as  if  it  were  in  the  way  of  business, 
crime  after  crime,  discussing  coolly  the  facile  and 
hardening  downward  path  on  which  he  has  en- 
tered, and  predicting  complete  immunity  and  suc- 
cess in  it;  until  Markheim,  thoroughly  disgusted 
at  the  vulgar  foulness  of  it  all,  evil  as  it  is  at  first 
hand  with  the  glamour  of  romance  all  taken  out, 
breaks  forth  impetuously:  "My  love  of  good  is 
damned  to  barrenness;  it  may,  and  let  it  be!  But 
I  have  still  my  hatred  of  evil;  and  from  that,  to 
your  galling  disappointment,  you  shall  see  that  I 
can  draw  both  energy  and  courage." 

It  is  his  resolve,  which  he  carries  out,  to  give 
himself  up  to  justice.  At  which  answer,  accord- 
ing to  Stevenson's  account,  occurs  this  astonishing 
thing:  "The  features  of  the  visitor  began  to  un- 
dergo a  wonderful  and  lovely  change :  they  bright- 
ened and  softened  with  a  tender  triumph;  and, 
even  as  they  brightened,  faded  and  dislimned."  * 

Well,  this  is  only  a  work  of  fiction;  it  does  not 

1  Stevenson,  "  Markheim,"  Works,  vol.  vii. 

181 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

prove  what  becomes  of  the  tempter,  perhaps;  and 
perhaps  it  may  strike  us  as  verging  on  blasphemy. 
But  when  from  this  writer  of  smaller  calibre  we 
turn  back  to  the  Book  of  Job,  another  work  of 
masterly  fiction,  we  may  leave  this  part  of  our 
subject  with  the  reflection  that  the  attack  by 
centre  was  originated  by  Satan,  whatever  he  is; 
and  that  it  was  an  attack  that  ought  to  be  made. 
Such  remonstrances  against  the  half-truths  in 
which  men  heedlessly  take  refuge,  and  against 
the  venal  commercial  ideals  into  which  men  so 
easily  lapse,  are  needed  still. 

IV 

In  the  second  agency  of  the  book's  action,  Job, 
the  great  protagonist,  we  have  another  uprise  of 
creative  ideal  in  the  author.  How  shall  I  ade- 
quately approach  this  colossal  creation,  adapting 
its  largeness  to  common  eyes  ? 

Job  is  wholly  unaware  that  he,  and  through 
him  the  Wisdom  which  is  highest  manhood,  is 
undergoing  a  crucial  test;  and  herein  lies  the  no- 
bility of  it.  It  is  his  native  integrity  of  manhood, 
not  spurred  on  or  directed  from  without,  but  grop- 
ing through  utter  gloom,  apparently  away  from 
God,  —  it  is  this  that  wins.  He  proves  by  simple 
honesty  to  self  and  ideal,  and  by  stedfast  loyalty 

182 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

to  the  Godlike  as  it  were  in  defiance  of  God,  that 
the  character  in  him  is  an  intrinsic  thing  and  not 
the  creature  of  reward  or  the  slave  of  penalty. 
Nor  is  he  alone  on  the  defensive,  barely  maintain- 
ing his  own.  In  uttermost  boldness  of  attack, 
taking  all  the  risks  of  immediate  destruction,  he 
turns  against  the  very  God  whose  arbitrary  deal- 
ing he  has  detected,  and  against  the  friends  who 
are  the  accredited  representatives  and  type  of 
Wisdom.  And  in  so  doing  he  tears  away  the  last 
shred  of  the  paralyzing  old  half-truth,  and  by 
setting  the  motive  of  Wisdom  on  an  immensely 
higher  plane,  opens  to  it  new  field  and  honor. 

Thus  Job  is  concerned  positively,  as  the  Satan 
was  negatively,  in  this  same  attack  on  the  citadel 
of  Wisdom.  Only,  his  line  of  siege  is  one  wherein 
the  whole  man  fights,  not  merely  his  logic;  it 
maintains,  so  to  say,  the  position  that  Wisdom  is 
something  not  merely  to  know  but  to  be.  Hence 
its  literary  embodiment  in  a  person,  with  his  inner 
life  coming  to  assertion  and  action.  By  this  means 
he  occupies  at  once  a  table-land  far  above  the 
paltry  considerations  of  profit  and  loss,  where 
he  can  measure  life  by  intrinsic  standards,  and 
whence  with  burning,  penetrative  vision  he  can 
see  all  the  heartless  coldness,  all  the  selfish  hy- 
pocrisies, of  his  friends. 

183 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

And  his  weapon  of  attack  is  the  simplest  in  the 
world:  just  to  say  and  be  the  truth,  as  his  heart 
owns  it.  If  he  is  a  man  perfect  and  upright,  per- 
fect and  upright  is  what  he  maintains  himself  to 
be.  No  God  nor  man,  and  no  theological  hair- 
splitting, can  make  him  palter  with  that  plain  fact. 
Again  and  again  the  friends  urge  him  to  confess 
himself  a  sinner:  he  will  not  do  it.  Incessantly 
they  throw  up  his  affliction  against  him  as  proof  posi- 
tive of  guilt:  no,  he  says,  if  it  proves  anything,  it 
proves  a  monstrous  wrong  and  injustice.  Fervently 
they  enjoin  upon  him  to  make  his  peace  with  God 
and  be  reconciled:  no,  he  says,  I  have  never  been 
at  war  with  God,  there  is  nothing  on  my  part  to 
reconcile.  So  it  goes  on,  with  no  inch  yielded,  no 
flinching  from  the  broad,  clear  ground  of  truth. 
There  is  nothing  so  conspicuous  in  the  book  as 
Job's  honesty  with  himself.  And  it  is  his  hon- 
esty that  wins. 

I  can  stay  only  to  give  in  baldest  outline  two 
or  three  of  the  salient  points,  or  stages,  in  his  mag- 
nificent battle;  regretting  all  the  while  that  so 
much  of  the  account  must  be  left  untouched.  Did 
I  not  say  the  Book  of  Job  is  a  veritable  universe 
of  spiritual  wealth  ? 

The  most  noticeable  thing,  doubtless,  is  the  way 
he  takes  his  life  in  his  hand  and  calls  his  Creator 

184 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

to  account.  We  are  aware,  of  course,  that  this  is 
the  God  who  has  always  been  Job's  tradition  and 
the  tradition  of  the  world :  an  arbitrary  Being  who 
does  what  He  will  and  renders  no  account,  and 
who  in  this  unmotived  affliction  of  Job  seems  to 
have  proved  Himself  a  tyrant  and  persecutor,  a 
power  like  merciless  nature,  consuming  perfect 
and  wicked  alike.  In  this,  as  we  have  noted,  Job 
sees  things  as  they  are;  for  in  the  Prologue,  we 
will  remember,  God  owns  Himself  to  have  done  a 
causeless  wrong.  Not  the  less,  so  to  approach  the 
Being  who  has  the  power  the  next  moment  to  an- 
nihilate him,  and  who  holds  the  swift  death  ready 
to  fall, —  to  approach  such  a  Being  and  according 
to  the  insight  of  a  wise  man  to  read  that  Being 
his  godlike  duty,  is  a  conception  which  makes  us 
hold  our  breath  at  the  sheer  daring  of  it. 

"Is  it  beseeming  to  Thee  [Job  says]  that  Thou  shouldst  oppress, 
That  Thou  shouldst  despise  the  labor  of  Thy  hands, 
Whilst  Thou  shinest  on  the  counsel  of  the  wicked?  .  .  . 
Thy  hands  have  fashioned  me  and  finished  me, 
Together,  all  round;  —  yet  Thou  wouldst  destroy  me! 
Remember  now  that  Thou  hast  modeled  me  as  in  clay; 
And  wilt  Thou  turn  me  unto  dust  again?"  l 

Much  sharper  words  than  these,  indeed,  he  says 
in  arraignment  of  God;  words  that  have  made 
men  in  all  ages,  as  it  made  his  immediate  friends, 

1  Job  x,  3,  9. 
I85 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM' 

accuse  him  of  blasphemy.  Hear  what  a  molten 
stream  of  reproach  this  is :  — 

"  Were  I  righteous,  mine  own  mouth  would  condemn  me ; 
Perfect  were  I,  yet  would  He  prove  me  perverse. 
Perfect  I  am,  —  I  value  not  my  soul  —  I  despise  my  life  — 
It  is  all  one  —  therefore  I  say, 
Perfect  and  wicked  He  consumeth  alike. 
If  the  scourge  destroyeth  suddenly, 
He  mocketh  at  the  dismay  of  the  innocent. 
The  earth  is  given  over  into  the  hands  of  the  wicked; 
The  face  of  its  judges  He  veileth;  — 
If  it  is  not  He,  who  then  is  it?" 

Now  what  keeps  us  from  judging  this  as  a  piece 
of  vulgar  denunciation  and  blasphemy  is  the  fact 
that  all  this  remonstrance  is  made  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  Godlike.  Job  has  an  ideal,  clarified  by 
his  own  justice  and  integrity,  of  what  the  God  who 
fashioned  him  ought  to  be;  and  with  an  agony 
of  dismay  he  seems  for  the  moment  to  have  found 
that  his  very  God,  in  the  fear  of  whom  his  life  has 
grown,  is  failing  of  the  Godlike.  So  one  point  has 
been  found,  the  point  of  reasonable  justice  and 
fatherly  love,  wherein  the  creature  seems  to  have 
run  ahead  of  his  Creator;  to  have  blazed  out  the 
way  in  life  and  revelation  that  the  Creator  must 
take  if  He  would  retain  the  allegiance  of  highest 

O  O 

manhood.  An  amazing  conception  this,  —  the  hu- 
man, for  once,  higher  in  the  scale  of  being  than 

1  Job  ix,  20-24. 

1 86 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

the  divine,  just  as  a  loving  worm  is  higher  than 
a  loveless  God.  Of  course  we  know  the  matter 
will  adjust  itself;  the  God  who  to  a  bewildered 
mortal  gaze  seems  to  have  fallen  behind  in  the 
onward  movement  will  catch  up  and  still  be  su- 
preme in  love  as  in  power;  but  to  see  how  the 
demand  for  this  comes  through  the  bewildered 
heart  of  man  as  it  clings  to  its  honest  integrity  is 
a  most  inspiring  thing.  Job's  attack,  which  is 
just  his  stalwart  life,  has  come  back  first  on  God 
Himself. 

But  in  the  next  step  Job's  attack  is  on  the 
friends.  We  recall  how  stale  and  insipid  he  found 
the  well-worn  maxims  they  plied  him  with,  and 
how  at  last  he  gave  over  trying  to  find  a  wise  man 
among  them.  Their  wisdom  was  so  cut-and-dried, 
so  arid,  so  academic,  that  there  seemed  no  more 
application  to  flesh-and-blood  experience  in  it. 
Worse  than  all,  they  themselves  seemed  to  have 
fallen  away  from  that  warm,  palpitating  human 
life  whose  true  expression  is  friendship  and  sym- 
pathy, and  to  have  become  as  hard  as  nails.  It 
is  well-nigh  the  most  bitter  note  of  his  sore  trial 
that  now,  in  the  time  of  his  greatest  need,  when, 
if  ever,  a  loving  heart  were  a  refuge,  his  friends, 
his  friends  on  whom  he  counted  so  much,  have 
failed  him.  And  yet,  after  all,  even  this  is  not 

187 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

the  ultimate  core  of  his  indictment  against  them, 
though  this  goes  with  it.  As  he  goes  on,  clear- 
ing the  grounds  of  Wisdom  and  discovering  point 
by  point  how  it  is  blended  and  interwoven  with 
the  divine,  all  at  once  he  unearths  a  startling 
fact.  They,  his  philosophic  friends,  who  have  ex- 
changed so  many  treasures  of  the  mind  with  him 
heretofore,  —  they  themselves  are  treacherously 
committed  to  their  commercial  ideal.  That,  in 
the  deepest  analysis,  is  why  they  have  forsaken 
him ;  not  because  anything  unloyal  or  unlovely 
has  caused  him  to  forfeit  their  regard,  but  be- 
cause by  sticking  to  their  cold  theory,  by  inferring 
his  wickedness  from  his  leprosy,  they  think  they 
have  discovered  where  God's  favor  points,  and 
are  hastening  to  get  on  His  safe  side  and  save 
their  skins.  That  wounds  his  soul  to  the  quick. 
A  man  that  falls  away  from  loyalty  like  that,  as 
he  says,  is  making  traffic  over  his  friend.  Why, 
he  ought  to  be  the  truer  friend  as  the  need  is  the 
sorer.  Such  is  Job's  ideal,  by  which  he  has  con- 
sistently lived:  he  has  always  been  a  friend  to  the 
friendless  and  a  father  to  the  fatherless.  Yet  here 
these  sages,  when  the  stress  of  friendship  comes, 
prove  that  the  very  tissue  of  their  nature  is  venal 
and  false;  they  are  forsaking  him  in  order  to  run 
to  cover  and  curry  favor  with  God.  Their  alle- 

188 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

giance  to  God  is  not  an  allegiance  to  manhood 
truth;  it  is  a  bargain. 

"Hear  ye  now  [he  says]  my  rebuke, 
And  listen  to  the  charges  of  my  lips. 
Will  ye  speak  what  is  wrong  for  God? 
And  will  ye,  for  Him,  utter  deceit? 
Will  ye  respect  His  person? 
Or  will  ye  be  special  pleaders  for  God? 
Would  it  be  well,  if  He  should  search  you  out? 
Or  will  ye  mock  Him,  as  man  mocketh  man? 
He  will  surely  convict  you  utterly, 
If  in  secret  ye  are  respecters  of  persons. 
Shall  not  His  majesty  make  you  afraid, 
And  the  dread  of  Him  fall  upon  you?"  1 

Thus  by  their  mercenary  ideal,  which  can  so  play 
fast  and  loose  with  love  and  truth,  so  cherish 
or  dismiss  friendship  according  to  their  selfish 
convenience,  they  are  poisoning  the  very  wells  of 
manhood,  are  passing  debased  coin  of  Wisdom. 
I  do  not  see  how  an  attack  could  be  more  central 
and  vital  than  this.  If  Wisdom  can  survive  this, 
it  will  surely  be  to  the  untold  enrichment  and 
purification  of  Wisdom.  And  as  for  these  false 
friends,  capable  though  they  are  of  saying  such 
true  things  and  so  smooth  and  beautiful,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  Job,  piercing  so  to  the  centre  of  their 
motives,  should  preface  this  very  passage  of  in- 
dictment by  the  words,  — 

1  Job  xiii,  6-1 1. 
189 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

"But  ye  too,  —  forgers  of  lies  are  ye ; 
Patchers-up  of  nothings  are  ye  all." 1 

From  this  point  he  breaks  with  them  utterly. 
They  may  talk  as  they  will;  but  in  life  and  spirit 
they  are  antipathetic.  For  he  is  staking  his  whole 
life  on  the  issue  of  plain  honesty,  in  word  and 
work,  on  dealing  with  things  as  they  are.  This 
is  the  way  he  follows  up  that  charge  against  his 
friends :  — 

"Be  silent ;  let  me  alone  ;  and  speak  will  I, 
Let  come  upon  me  what  will. 
Wherefore  do  I  take  my  flesh  in  my  teeth, 
And  put  my  life  in  my  hand? 
Behold  —  He  may  slay  me  ;  I  may  not  hope  ; 
But  my  ways  will  I  maintain,  to  His  face. 
Nay,  that  shall  be  to  me  also  for  salvation, 
For  no  false  one  shall  come  into  His  presence."  2 

This  is  the  man  who,  as  typical  wise  man,  "feared 
God  and  shunned  evil."  Very  evidently,  to  fear 
God  is  not  synonymous  with  being  afraid  of  God. 
The  friends  are  that,  with  a  cowardice  which  to 
Job  is  a  craven  effrontery;  while  he  in  his  strength 
of  conviction  has  left  base  fear  behind.  No:  it 
is  to  fear  what  the  inner  man  feels  is  false  and 
dishonest.  Job  is  ready  to  die  in  such  fear. 

Then  in  one  step  more,  leaving  the  friends  as  no 
longer  worthy  of  his  trust,  Job  turns  to  the  very 

1  Job  xiii,  4.  2  Job  xiii,  13-16. 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

Hand  that  has  so  stricken  him,  to  the  God  against 
whom  a  little  while  ago  he  brought  so  fearful  an 
indictment.  That  was  a  hearsay  God,  the  One 
whom  he  had  called  to  account,  —  such  a  God 
as  false-hearted  friends  could  make  out  of  their 
logic,  and  perhaps  as  unreal  as  their  friendship 
itself.  At  any  rate,  Job's  supreme  longing  is  to 
find  God,  to  know  His  mind,  to  come  into  His 
very  presence  with  his  life's  record  on  his  shoul- 
der, presenting  his  righteous  cause  for  judgment 
and  justification.  We  are  familiar  with  the  old 
Greek  phrase  about  appealing  from  Philip  drunk 
to  Philip  sober.  Job's  appeal  is  from  the  God 
whose  dealings  have  laid  Him  open  to  the  charge 
of  arbitrary  hardness  to  the  God  who  loves,  and 
who  may  be  trusted  and  loved  as  a  friend.  To 
this  appeal,  and  its  detailed  meanings  for  life,  the 
rest  of  the  book  is  devoted. 

It  is  a  pity  we  have  not  time  to  follow  the  mag- 
nificent voyage  of  Job's  soul  to  the  light  of  the 
restored  and  infinitely  warmer  friendship  of  God: 
through  his  longing  regret  that  there  is  no  Days- 
man between  them,  to  lay  his  composing  hand 
on  both;  then  his  entreaty  that  somehow  that 
friendly  Daysman  function  may  be  vouchsafed; 
then  his  feeling  how  good  it  were  if  he,  so  near 
the  grave,  could  hear  the  call  of  God  and  answer 

191 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

it  beyond  death;  then  his  impassioned  conviction 
that  his  Advocate  is  real,  and  actually  exists  on 
high;  until  all  his  dream  of  life  and  the  hereafter 
culminates  in  his  firm  knowledge,  as  of  a  thing 
that  must  be,  that  his  Redeemer  —  literally  his 
next  of  kin  —  liveth,  that  He  will  stand  survivor 
over  Job's  dust,  and  that  in  consequence  of  His 
favor  Job  shall  surely  see  God  with  unclouded 
eyes,  a  stranger  no  more.  Such  is  the  faith  of  the 
man  perfect  and  upright,  who  through  all  the 
midnight  of  baffling  experience  steadily  main- 
tained his  way  before  God,  believing  that  to  be, 
by  however  mysterious  course,  his  only  salvation. 
And  that  simple  faith  was  rewarded,  even  in 
the  sight  of  men.  Not  with  restored  property  and 
household  twice  over,  nor  with  regained  health 
and  honor,  nor  with  length  of  days.  These  were 
not  his  reward.  These  were  but  the  incidental 
refutation  of  his  friends  and  of  the  world's  effete 
notions,  in  the  only  language  they  could  under- 
stand. No:  Job's  reward  came  while  he  was  still 
a  leper  on  his  ash-heap;  when,  after  the  august 
Presence  of  the  whirlwind  had  passed  His  works 
in  review  before  him,  showing  that  to  all  His  crea- 
tures He  is  a  God  loving  and  very  careful,  and 
that  in  the  sunshine  of  that  love  and  care  every 
creature  lives  its  glad  free  life  with  wisdom  enough 

192 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

endowing  to  fulfil  its  function  in  joy,  Job  realized 
that  the  God  whom  he  had  so  supremely  sought 
was  no  hearsay  God  but  a  living  Presence,  — 

"I  had  heard  of  Thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear, 
But  now  mine  eye  seeth  Thee."  l 

Nothing  but  what  we  live  for  supremely  can  be 
our  reward  of  living.  Job  lived  in  this  principle; 
and  when  at  last  the  light  of  life  came,  though 
the  pains  of  deadly  disease  and  the  ravages  of 
loss  were  still  upon  him,  he  was  humble  and  sat- 
isfied. So  the  old  half-truth  found  its  counter- 
part and  came  round  whole,  after  all;  but  on  a 
deeper  and  infinitely  larger  scale. 


What  summarizing  word,  now,  shall  give  in  the 
light  of  to-day,  the  relation  of  this  Attack  by  Cen- 
tre to  the  growing  ideal  of  Wisdom  ? 

The  attack,  momentous  as  it  is,  has  not  been 
an  attack  on  Wisdom  at  all.  Wisdom  stands  sted- 
fast,  with  its  stately  house  and  its  seven  pillars, 
stronger  and  comelier  than  ever.  There  is  nothing 
to  modify  or  shade  down  from  that  fervid  mono- 
logue of  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  in  the  eighth  of  Pro- 
verbs. Job  himself,  the  great  protagonist  of  our 
conflict,  virtually  acknowledges  as  much.  After  his 

1  Job  xlii,  5. 
193 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

conviction  of  his  friends  and  of  his  conventional 
God,  he  proceeds  to  pay  unchanged  homage  to 
Wisdom,  in  that  masterly  ode,  the  twenty-eighth 
chapter;  wherein,  after  searching  in  vain  for  it, 
in  the  mine  where  treasure  is  and  in  the  wilder- 
ness where  man  is  not,  in  the  sea  and  in  the  tracts 
of  sky,  nay,  and  in  the  vague  rumors  of  Abaddon 
and  Death,  he  traces  it  inward  to  the  secret 
thoughts  of  God,  and  thence  back  again,  as  rev- 
erence and  departure  from  evil,  to  its  human 
home,  its  nesting-place  in  the  heart  of  man :  — 

"God  understandeth  the  way  thereto, 

And  He  knoweth  its  place. 

For  He  looketh  to  the  ends  of  the  earth ; 

Under  the  whole  heaven  He  seeth. 

When  He  gave  the  wind  its  weight, 

And  meted  out  the  waters  in  a  measure,  — 

When  He  gave  a  law  to  the  rain, 

And  a  way  to  the  flash  of  the  thunder,  — 

Then  did  He  see,  and  declare  it; 

He  established  it,  yea,  He  searched  it  out. 

And  unto  man  He  said, 
'Behold,  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that  is  Wisdom, 

And  to  shun  evil  is  understanding.' "  1 

The  same  truth  this,  that  we  have  heard  before, 
and  shall  hear  again,  as  long  as  men  see  clear  and 
true. 
No:  it  was  no  attack  on  Wisdom  which  Satan- 

1  Job  xxviii,  23-28. 
194 


THE  ATTACK  BY  CENTRE 

ism  and  human  integrity  combined  to  make;  it 
was  a  righteous  and  truth-loyal  attack  on  the  too 
selfish,  too  venal  motive  which  had  grown  like 
an  excrescence  on  men's  theories  of  Wisdom. 
There  was  something  in  the  better  nature  of  the 
Jew,  avid  of  success  though  he  was,  which  rose 
in  wrath  and  shame  against  making  the  supreme 
issues  of  life  commercial;  and  this  greatest  of 
sages,  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Job,  speaks  out 
for  his  nation  and  its  ideals,  clearing  the  murky 
air. 

So  the  attack  resolves  itself  into  the  answer  to 
a  very  plain  question.  You  look  for  reward :  sup- 
pose the  reward  fails,  what  then  ?  Shall  you  stop 
being  wise  —  stop  fearing  God  and  shunning 
evil  ?  Suppose  you  find  the  forces  of  the  universe 
working  in  inverse  order,  —  what  then  ?  Shall 
you  begin  to  work  in  inverse  order,  being  false 
and  foolish,  in  order  to  secure  the  fool's  reward  ? 
No:  there  is  a  deeper  strain  in  you  bidding  you  be 
true;  for  somehow,  though  we  may  have  to  wait 
for  it,  there  is  a  right  order;  and  truth  is  truth, 
and  Wisdom  is  wisdom,  in  scorn  of  consequence. 

At  the  beginning  we  were  ready  to  ask  in  doubt, 
What  is  there  to  attack  ?  We  were  thinking,  per- 
haps, of  little  flaws  to  pick  and  petty  repairs  to 
make,  in  the  comely  palace  of  Our  Lady  Wisdom, 

195 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

with  its  courts  and  seven  pillars.  And  now  as 
we  look  back  over  our  way,  we  find  that  there  was 
everything  to  attack.  So  it  is,  as  men's  thoughts 
grow.  We  must  not  allow  our  views  of  truth  to 
stagnate;  we  must  keep  things  moving,  must 
stir  them  up  and  turn  them  over,  until  every  part 
of  our  system  is  exposed  to  the  light  and  aerated 
into  good  red  blood.  For  the  case  of  Job's  friends 
shows  us  that  we  cannot  be  wise  with  our  brain 
alone ;  Wisdom  is  not  an  academic  thing ;  we 
must  descend  into  the  arena  of  action  and  suffer- 
ing and  be  wise  with  our  life.  Else  we  may  get 
our  philosophy  crooked  and  mischievous,  working 
in  distorted  order. 

"Hold  thou  the  good:  define  it  well: 
For  fear  divine  Philosophy 
Should  push  beyond  her  mark,  and  be 
Procuress  to  the  Lords  of  Hell."  l 

Job  fought  his  fight  by  the  sublimely  simple  way 
of  holding  the  good,  as  a  true  man  saw  it,  against 
world  and  universe.  Yes:  the  Book  of  Job  is  a 
sceptical  book  after  all,  calling  long  entrenched 
notions  to  sharp  account  and  stewardship;  but 
its  scepticism  is  worth  more  than  orthodoxy. 

1  Tennyson.  In  Memoriam,  liii. 


196 


THE  ATTACK   BY   FLANK 


THE  WORLD  OF  WORK  AND  WAGE 

I.  The  new  problem  of  Wisdom. 
II.  The  tone  of  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes. 

III.  The  question  of  what  is  rewarding. 

IV.  The  negative  element  of  the  book. 
V.  The  positive  and  constructive  strain. 

VI.  The  addition  to  the  structure  of  Wisdom. 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

IF  we  will  attend  duly  to  the  implication  of 
things,  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that  at  the  out- 
set of  each  of  these  books,  Job  and  Eccle- 
siastes,  there  is  presented  a  situation  which  in  a 
concrete  case  suggests,  we  may  almost  say  neces- 
sitates, the  specific  problem  of  the  book.  To  get 
at  the  most  productive  interpretation,  we  have  but 
to  take  this  situation  in  its  plain  elements,  and 
follow  out  the  line  of  the  most  natural  inquiry  it 
raises,  which  is  in  fact  the  line  of  least  resistance. 
In  each  book  the  case  of  Wisdom,  as  it  were  at 
the  latest  date,  is  embodied  in  a  personage;  who, 
by  the  fact  of  possessing  in  ideal  degree  some  of 
the  Wisdom  elements,  marks  a  kind  of  outlook- 
point  from  which  we  can  see  and  reckon  the 
elements  yet  lacking  or  yet  to  be  cleared  up. 

What  the  person  of  Job  thus  embodies  and 
suggests,  we  have  seen.  There,  by  the  conditions 
of  the  problem,  was  portrayed  a  man  who  in- 
corporated in  his  own  life  the  highest  ideal  that 
man  had  shaped  of  Wisdom;  of  Wisdom  when, 
in  its  prime,  so  to  say,  and  as  it  were  under  sim- 

199 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

pie  patriarchal  conditions,  it  was  the  first  fruits 
of  reverence  and  identified  with  sincere  piety. 
He  was  a  man  perfect  and  upright,  one  who  feared 
God  and  shunned  evil.  Evidently  in  this  per- 
sonage the  problem  suggested  was  not,  as  in 
Proverbs,  the  question  what  it  is  to  be  wise.  That 
element  of  the  matter  is  eliminated  from  the  in- 
quiry; to  be  wise,  ideally  wise,  is  to  be  like  Job. 
But  the  question  naturally  rises  —  and  it  is  not 
malice  that  prompts  it  but  penetrative  common 
sense  —  what  is  he  so  wise,  that  is,  so  reverently 
pious,  for  ?  For  profit,  for  the  reward  he  gets, 
Satan  answers;  and  the  standards  of  Wisdom 
culture  hitherto  prevailing  cannot  gainsay  him. 
Satan  is  uncovering  the  lurking-place  of  motive, 
the  heart  of  the  intrinsic  man;  to  reveal  whether 
he  is  essentially  false,  or  whether  it  is  in  him  to 
be  true.  From  this  too  natural  answer  of  the  Ac- 
cuser's, the  next  question,  which  merely  projects 
it  into  form  for  a  test  case,  follows.  Suppose  the 
reward  fails,  suppose  the  forces  of  the  universe, 
with  which  the  sanctions  of  Wisdom  have  come 
to  be  identified,  begin  to  work  in  inverse  order, 
what  then  ?  It  is  a  question,  we  see,  which  does 
not  lend  itself  to  answer  by  speculative  dogma;  the 
answer  must  be  put  in  terms  of  personal  life.  And 
the  staunch  faithfulness  of  Job  to  his  manhood 

200 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

integrity,  maintained  in  loyal  devotedness  yet  in 
stern  defiance,  is  the  tremendous  embodied  an- 
swer. A  sublime  new  revelation  this,  of  what  it 
is  in  human  nature,  the  lay  human  nature  with 
its  native  fibre  and  insight,  to  know  and  to  be; 
man  can  know  and  choose  a  Godlike  ideal,  and 
be  true  to  it,  though  the  sanctions  of  the  universe 
seem  against  him. 


Here  in  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,1  which  we  now 
take  up,  we  see  likewise  the  situation  of  things 
embodied  in  a  person.  Calling  himself  Koheleth 
(which  name  is  the  Hebrew  original  of  the  Greek 
name  Ecclesiastes,  and  of  the  English  term  The 
Preacher),  this  person  evidently  wishes  to  be 
taken  as  King  Solomon,  in  order  that  we  may  as- 
sociate with  him  Solomon's  ideal  endowments  of 
wealth  and  wisdom.  It  is  a  situation  in  which,  as 
we  naturally  surmise,  both  wealth  and  wisdom, 
and  especially  the  former,  in  ideal  balance  and 
fruition,  are  to  play  their  part  in  life;  not  now  as 
in  Job,  in  a  primitive  environment  remote  from 
men,  but  in  the  world  of  affairs,  where  men  strug- 
gle and  labor.  The  scene  is  more  complex  and 

1  For  the  grounded  and  detailed  exposition  of  the  Book  of  Eccle- 
siastes, the  author  would  refer  to  his  book,  Words  oj  Koheleth. 

2O I 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

involved,  more  like  our  modern  civilization;  and 
Wisdom,  though  at  heart  it  may  still  be  sincere 
piety,  has  to  take  the  form  of  masterfulness,  man- 
agement, practical  adjustment  of  life  to  affairs. 
And  in  brief  the  situation  is  this:  Here,  by  the 
conditions  of  our  problem,  is  a  man  kingly,  pros- 
perous, famous  for  his  wisdom  and  his  wealth 
alike,  the  very  type  and  ideal  of  the  Wisdom  ages; 
the  one  historic  man  who  stands  for  supreme  suc- 
cess; and  he  has  obtained  all  the  reward  of  Wis- 
dom that  heart  could  wish.  This  situation,  as  we 
see,  is  just  the  opposite  of  that  of  Job;  who  failed 
of  the  wise  man's  reward,  nay  who  suffered  the 
extreme  of  the  wicked  man's  punishment,  yet  re- 
tained his  righteous  integrity.  Perhaps,  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it,  it  is  as  perilous,  as  full  of 
hazard,  for  a  man  to  get  all  he  wants,  as  it  is  for 
him  to  lose  or  fail. 

At  any  rate,  this  new  situation  projects  itself 
into  a  new  problem  of  life;  not  so  massive  and  cen- 
tral as  Job's,  but  more  chill  and  paralyzing;  a 
problem  pressed  upon  us  no  less  by  success  than 
by  failure,  and  even  more  by  luxury  than  by  labor. 
It  does  not  rise  up  like  Satan's  question  to  smite 
our  motives  in  the  face,  but  comes  round  insidi- 
ously, after  all  our  schemes  of  life  seem  in  bal- 
anced order,  with  work  and  wage  each  in  place. 

202 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

For  this  reason  it  is  that  I  call  it  the  Attack  by 
Flank.  And  the  problem,  raised  by  Koheleth- 
Solomon  himself,  is  this:  Here  am  I,  with  a  re- 
ward of  life  ideally  great,  with  all  that  Wisdom 
can  earn  or  fortune  bestow:  and  now  that  I  have 
it,  what  have  I  ?  What  does  it  amount  to  ?  What 
new  possessions  does  it  add  to  my  life,  my  soul,  my 
real  self  ?  Why,  just  as  soon  as  I  get  it,  it  is  vanity, 
vapor.  Whatever  I  get,  wealth,  wages,  stores,  even 
store  of  knowledge,  all  is  vanity;  and  the  seeking 
after  it,  pursued  never  so  hopefully,  pursued  in 
whatever  direction,  is  but  a  chase  after  wind. 
WThat  is  that  thing  reward,  when  we  have  got  it  ? 
It  is  a  puzzling  question,  any  answer  to  which 
must  lie  very  deep.  That  is  one  reason  why  the 
book  itself  is  so  puzzling.  It  ploughs  deep;  it 
weighs  and  finds  wanting  many  of  the  things  that 
men  most  value;  it  forces  the  soul  to  a  point  where 
the  utmost  resources  of  Wisdom  are  taxed  to  fur- 
nish light.  Nay,  it  reaches  one  impasse  of  life,  its 
impact  on  the  hereafter,  where  the  very  insight  of 
its  era,  the  most  penetrative  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment can  afford,  is  fairly  baffled.  But  its  problem 
is  one  which,  sooner  or  later,  all  life  must  meet, 
and  which  it  puts  a  man  into  the  very  soul  of  Wis- 
dom to  have  solved.  Nor  is  the  solution  so  hard 
as  a  perverse  heart  would  make  it.  It  is  very  sim- 

203 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

pie,  and  adapted  to  plain  living;  it  comes,  indeed, 
to  man  in  all  his  labor  which  he  laboreth  under 
the  sun. 

This,  then,  is  the  new  problem  which,  insinu- 
ating its  disparagement  of  the  values  on  which 
men  set  their  heart,  amounts  to  a  new  attack,  a 
new  plea  of  scepticism;  only,  instead  of  assailing 
the  foundation  of  the  central  citadel,  it  comes 
round  by  flank  and  forces  the  garrison  already 
in  possession  to  show  its  passport.  What  is  that 
thing  reward,  after  all  ? 

II 

That  we  may  get  keyed  up,  so  to  say,  for  the 
solution  of  this  problem,  I  must  needs  speak  here 
of  the  tone,  the  sentiment,  the  prevailing  mood, 
of  this  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  as  it  has  wrought  its 
effect  upon  us  and  upon  readers  in  general.  For 
while  by  one  key  of  mood  it  is  the  saddest  book 
in  the  world,  by  another  and  I  think  the  prevail- 
ing one,  it  is  one  of  the  bravest  and  cheeriest. 

For  us  of  these  later  days  the  book  lies  under 
a  grave  handicap.  The  sentiment  that  has  idly 
gathered  round  it  has  consigned  it  to  the  category 
of  gloom  and  world-weariness  and  pessimism  and 
despair.  Men  have  taken  it  as  a  kind  of  "  Sor- 
rows of  Werther"  among  the  Scripture  books,  and 

204 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

responded  to  it,  mostly  by  hearsay,  as  they  did 
to  that  sickish  youthful  work  of  Goethe's,  which 
in  its  day  set  the  pace  of  a  generation's  sentiment. 
We  know  how  prone  men  are,  like  sheep  follow- 
ing a  bell-wether,  to  run  and  jump  as  some  wave 
of  fashion  tells  them  to  do.  Nay,  sometimes,  as 
Carlyle  puts  it,  quoting  from  Richter:  "If  you 
hold  a  stick  before  the  Wether,  so  that  he,  by 
necessity,  leaps  in  passing  you,  and  then  withdraw 
your  stick,  the  Flock  will  nevertheless  all  leap  as 
he  did;  and  the  thousandth  sheep  shall  be  found 
impetuously  vaulting  over  air,  as  the  first  did  over 
an  otherwise  impassable  barrier."  1 

One  is  tempted  to  think  much  the  same  thing 
has  befallen  the  world's  reception  of  this  Book 
of  Ecclesiastes.  Its  opening  exclamation,  Vanity 
of  vanities,  of  course  by  its  very  abruptness  and 
sweepingness  arrested  immediate  attention;  that 
was  its  design.  Thenceforth  that  word  vanity 
was  taken  as  the  label  of  the  book.  It  suggested 
a  felicitous  name  for  one  of  the  most  powerful 
episodes  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  the  episode  of 
Vanity  Fair;  and  Bunyan  made  good  wholesome 
use  of  the  idea.  This  name,  Vanity  Fair,  was  in 
turn  utilized  by  Thackeray  for  the  title  of  his  lead- 
ing novel;  and  he  too  did  not  misuse  the  idea; 

1  Carlyle:   Essay  on  Bos-well's  Johnson. 
205 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

though,  writing  at  a  time  when  the  age  was  just  be- 
ginning to  recover  from  its  "  Sorrows  of  Werther" 
sentimentalism,  he  left  a  little  too  much  of  the 
weakness  of  that  sentiment  with  them.  So  the 
half-real,  half-spurious  feeling  of  the  vanity  of 
things,  especially  of  social  and  fashionable  things, 
has  spread,  like  a  kind  of  spiritual  measles,  over 
the  shallow  world,  making  a  vogue  of  the  melan- 
choly Jacques  mood;  and  tracing  back  through 
this  name  vanity  to  Ecclesiastes,  has  made  that 
sturdy  sage,  to  his  great  hurt,  its  confederate.  To 
his  great  hurt,  I  say;  because  the  judgment  which 
would  whittle  down  his  message  to  a  sickly  sigh 
of  vanity,  or  which  indeed  would  make  the  sad- 
ness of  his  book  overbalance  the  cheer,  is  a  very 
superficial  judgment.  It  has  gone  off  on  an  idle 
catch-word,  and  measured  the  book  by  that;  leav- 
ing the  book  itself  mostly  unread  and  wholly  un- 
proportioned.  I  speak  with  some  feeling;  it  seems 
such  a  pity  that  for  the  sake  of  a  half-insincere 
sentiment,  so  strong  and  prevailing  a  fibre  of  the 
book  should  have  missed  its  due. 

This,  however,  is  only  one  side  of  the  matter, 
coming  as  it  does  merely  from  those  lachrymose 
people  who  would  count  the  book  sad  because  it 
is  weak.  There  is  another  class,  not  sufficiently 
respected  among  us,  for  whom  the  book  is  sad 
206 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

because  it  is  strong;  because  it  probes  to  the 
underworld  of  being  where  are  the  sad,  searching 
elements  of  manhood.  The  sceptics  of  various 
name,  with  whom  the  book  has  always  been  a 
favorite,  are  ahead  of  us  in  realizing  that  by  call- 
ing in  question  this  matter  of  reward,  or  wages, 
it  seeks  to  draw  men's  regard  away  from  the  vain 
and  futile,  to  the  real  values  of  life.  This  is  un- 
deniably saddening  to  begin  with,  and  imparts 
a  sombre  tone  to  the  whole  discussion.  You  can- 
not make  such  a  clean  sweep  of  things  so  fondly 
worked  for  and  valued,  and  carry  it  off  in  a  light- 
hearted,  nonchalant  mood.  But  there  is  something 
bracing  in  such  sadness  as  this,  and  underneath 
it  flows  a  current  of  solemn  joy. 

And  the  book's  sweep  is  a  clean  one;  there  is 
no  doubt  of  that.  At  the  very  opening  word  Eccle- 
siastes  pronounces  sentence  of  vanity  on  all  things 
under  the  sun.  And  then,  to  make  the  case  more 
hopeless  still,  he  denies  men  an  outlook  toward 
a  world  beyond  this  life,  where  presumably  wrongs 
might  be  righted  and  vanity  exchanged  for  solid 
substance.  These  are  the  two  main  counts  in  the 
book's  indictment  of  life.  The  crookedness  of 
the  world,  the  enigmas  of  fate,  the  shocks  of 
chance,  the  blows  of  death,  all  resolve  themselves 
eventually  into  these  two  —  vanity  here,  lack  of 

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HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

outlook  yonder.  And  from  one  point  of  view  these 
are  absolute;  they  fill  the  world  full;  absolute, 
and  portrayed  so  just  on  purpose  to  leave  no  ex- 
ception, no  loophole  of  escape.  Ecclesiastes  minces 
no  words,  pares  down  or  shades  off  no  terms,  in 
setting  them  forth.  It  is  as  if  he  had  in  mind  some 
speculative  venture  from  which  he  would  warn 
men;  some  South  Sea  Bubble,  or  some  project 
for  extracting  gold  from  sea-water.  And  such  a 
design,  in  very  truth,  is  what  he  has.  There  are 
some  cherished  schemes  of  life,  he  virtually  says, 
from  which  you  cannot  be  dissuaded  too  abso- 
lutely. You  must  be  startled  and  kicked  away 
from  them  if  necessary;  they  are  barren,  vain, 
there  is  no  outlook  that  way.  And  what  if  these 
futile  things  should  turn  out  to  be  the  very  things 
that  men  most  dream  of  and  work  for,  —  the 
cherished  rewards,  wages,  profits,  luxuries  of  life  ? 
Well,  if  it  is  so,  unpalatable  as  the  truth  is,  we 
ought  to  know  it.  And  it  is  part  of  Ecclesiastes' 
task,  the  ungracious,  growling,  old-fogy  part,  to 
make  men  know  and  own  just  this  truth. 

So  as  his  austere  beginning  he  concludes  all 
under  vanity.  Yet  all  is  told  in  a  robust,  hearty, 
ringing  tone,  which  ill  beseems  one  whose  spirit  is 
crushed  by  it,  or  who  would  leave  a  world  welter- 
ing in  vanity  and  agnosticism.  Here  is  where  we 
208 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

ought  to  take  account  of  what  lies  beyond  the  out- 
set: the  positive  temper,  the  onward  sweep,  the 
progress  of  the  book.  If  it  is  designed  to  make 
gloom  and  pessimism  prevail,  then  it  has  chosen 
a  strangely  inconsistent  medium  to  set  that  sen- 
timent forth.  There  is  in  the  style  a  buoyancy  of 
opinion,  a  wholesome  steadiness  of  recovery,  an 
emergence  from  every  knotty  puzzle  to  what  is 
more  lucid  and  more  deeply  based,  which  be- 
tokens that  the  counsels  of  the  book  are  designed 
to  pass  outward  not  in  gloom,  but  in  strength  and 
cheer. 

And  this  points  to  what  is  the  distinctive  con- 
tribution of  Ecclesiastes  to  the  world's  asset  of 
truth.  The  vanity  with  which  it  begins  is  not  its 
point  of  approach,  but  its  point  of  departure.  The 
book  exists  not  to  prove  to  the  world  that  every- 
thing is  vanity;  but  because  everything  is  vanity, 
to  counsel  men  what  to  do  about  it  and  what 
manner  of  men  to  be.  It  is  a  surge  onward  from 
vanity  to  solid  substance.  From  the  things  that 
are  futile  and  disappointing  it  leads  the  soul 
gently  and  surely  to  elements  of  life  that  it  may 
depend  on  and  rejoice  in  permanently. 

The  literary  form  itself  answers  to  this  trend  of 
counsel.  In  a  former  chapter  I  remarked  that  as 
the  Wisdom  literature  developed,  a  thread  of  con- 

209 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

tinuity  worked  in,  to  bind  the  detached  maxims 
or  mashals  into  a  unity  and  progress;  and  that 
this  binding  thread  of  Ecclesiastes  was  inductive. 
That  is,  the  author  assembles  the  facts  of  life, 
sombre  or  reassuring,  not  merely  to  make  an 
anthology,  as  the  sages  did  in  Proverbs,  nor  to 
make  them  tell  a  story  or  prove  an  argument,  as 
in  Job;  but  to  weigh  them,  balance  them  up,  and 
draw  a  practical  conclusion.  The  author  assumes 
a  historic  personality,  it  is  true,  but  not  as  the 
hero  of  a  tale;  he  tells  of  the  kingly  enterprises 
he  instituted,  and  the  inner  results  he  got  from 
them,  speaking  as  a  sage  who  was  discovering 
wisdom;  and  then,  dropping  the  kingly  role,  goes 
on  to  recount  other  facts  which  any  one  can  see, 
and  the  wise  conclusions  to  which,  as  inductive 
data,  they  point.  It  is  like  going  into  the  turbid 
arena  of  affairs  and  working  out  the  problem 
of  life  gradually,  before  his  readers'  eyes.  So 
whenever  vanity  is  alleged,  whether  in  the  large 
range  of  the  beginning  or  as  connected  with  some 
smaller  detail  of  experience,  it  is  alleged  simply 
as  a  futility,  a  barren  hope,  which  is  to  be  evalu- 
ated and  left  behind,  in  order  that  the  soul  may 
advance  to  something  solider,  turn  inward  to 
something  deeper,  something  not  subject  to  van- 
ity. Thus  the  book  which  began  in  the  minor  key 
210 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

modulates  in  ever  increasing  proportion  into  the 
robuster  major  chords.  How  can  you  deny  such 
a  strain  to  a  course  of  counsel  which  from  all  the 
devious  and  tortuous  mazes  of  baffling  experi- 
ence through  which  it  must  pass  emerges  to  such 
a  culmination  as  this:  "Go  thou,  eat  thy  bread 
with  gladness,  and  drink  with  merry  heart  thy 
wine;  for  already  hath  God  accepted  thy  works. 
At  every  season  let  thy  garments  be  white,  and 
oil  upon  thy  head  not  be  lacking.  Prove  life  with 
a  woman  whom  thou  lovest  all  the  days  of  thy 
vapor-life  which  He  hath  given  thee  under  the 
sun,  —  all  the  days  of  thy  vanity.  For  this  is  thy 
portion  in  life,  and  in  thy  labor  which  thou  labor- 
est  under  the  sun.  All  that  thy  hand  findeth  to  do, 
do  thou  with  thy  might;  for  there  is  no  work,  nor 
cleverness,  nor  knowledge,  nor  wisdom,  in  the 
grave  whither  thou  goest."  1 

As  much  as  to  say,  what  if  the  grave  were  the 
burial  of  those  gifts  which  you  so  value  ?  Make 
up  life  not  with  reference  to  the  grave,  and  not 
minding  the  impending  death  at  all.  "  For  who 
is  he,"  Ecclesiastes  has  just  said,  "  that  is  bound 
up  with  all  the  living?  —  to  him  there  is  hope; 
for  the  living  dog  is  better  than  the  dead  lion." * 

1  Ecclesiastes  ix,  7-10. 

2  Ecclesiastes,  ix,  4. 

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HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

No:  make  up  life  rather  out  of  the  genial  mate- 
rials of  your  daily  lot,  out  of  the  work  which  God 
has  apportioned  you,  and  which  by  the  very  mas- 
tery and  success  proves  God's  acceptance  of  it. 
Here  are  all  the  materials  of  wisdom  and  know- 
ledge and  joy,  right  at  your  doors;  all  you  need 
to  tone  up  and  invigorate  your  soul,  to  be  had 
for  the  gathering. 

I  have  thus  had  to  turn  aside  a  little  and  trace 
in  the  large  the  trend  and  tone  of  the  book,  in 
order  at  the  outset  to  clear  away  the  haze  which 
an  idle  sentiment  has  drawn  round  it  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  the  too  unrelieved  gloom 
which  a  one-sided  study  has  infused  into  it.  We 
must  judge  a  structure  from  the  beauty  and 
strength  it  exhibits  when  complete,  and  not  while 
the  scaffolding  still  obscures  the  design,  or  the 
chips  and  fragments  of  labor  clutter  up  the  floors 
and  passage-ways.  We  must  judge  Ecclesiastes 
not  by  the  dust  and  vanity  that  dim  the  eyes 
and  choke  the  throat  as  he  stirs  up  the  evils  of 
a  crooked  world,  but  rather  by  the  noble  ideal 
of  living  which  he  has  extricated  from  it  all  and 
set  forth  as  the  finished  outcome  of  his  explora- 
tion and  survey  of  things.  This  it  is  which  will 
stand  paramount  as  his  distinctive  contribution 
to  Wisdom. 

212 


Ill 

Returning  now  to  the  point  at  which  the  attack 
by  flank  joined  issue:  What  is  that  thing  reward, 
of  which  men  make  such  account  ?  Truly,  this 
seems  like  an  invidious  cavil  to  raise.  Reward  ? 
Why,  do  we  not  all  work  for  wages;  are  not  wages 
a  legitimate  correlate  of  work;  is  not  the  very 
thing  we  make,  the  house  we  build,  or  the  fortune 
we  amass,  or  the  knowledge  we  gather,  —  is  not 
this  the  wage  of  our  work,  as  natural  an  answer 
to  it  as  the  clay  to  the  seal  ?  And  now  to  raise  the 
chilling  question,  "  What  is  all  this  worth  ?"  —is 
it  not  almost  like  a  plea  of  sour  grapes,  a  cover 
for  our  disappointment  or  an  excuse  for  shirk- 
ing and  malingering,  like  FalstafFs  question  of 
honor,  asked  because  he  was  too  cowardly  to  risk 
his  life  in  battle?  "  WThat  is  honor?  a  word.  What 
is  in  that  word  honor  ?  what  is  that  honor  ?  air. 
A  trim  reckoning!  Who  hath  it  ?  he  that  died 
o'  Wednesday.  Doth  he  feel  it  ?  no.  Doth  he 
hear  it  ?  no.  'T  is  insensible,  then.  Yea,  to  the 
dead.  But  will  it  not  live  with  the  living?  no. 
W7hy  ?  detraction  will  not  suffer  it.  Therefore  I'll 
none  of  it.  Honor  is  a  mere  scutcheon:  and  so 
ends  my  catechism."  * 

1  Shakespeare,  First  Henry  IV,  Act  v,  sc.  i. 
213 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

Is  it  not,  then,  a  kind  of  underhand  thing,  a 
stealing  round  by  flank,  to  insinuate  upon  Wis- 
dom such  a  Falstaffian  objection  as  this  ? 

To  all  which  the  answer  involved  in  this  flank 
encounter  is :  This  is  not  an  attack  on  wages,  like 
the  superficial  onslaughts  on  wealth  and  capital 
that  demagogues  are  making  nowadays,  as  if  the 
success  that  life  affords  were  to  be  accounted  an 
unholy  thing.  Nor  is  it  a  question  of  striking  work 
because  wages,  or  higher  wages,  are  not  forth- 
coming. Let  us  remember  the  conditions  with 
which  we  started:  man  is  assumed  to  have  all  the 
wages  that  heart  can  wish,  all  that  a  Solomon, 
with  ideal  endowments  of  wealth  and  wisdom, 
can  surround  himself  with.  Yes:  man  has  wages, 
ought  to  have  wages,  ought  to  see  of  the  travail 
of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied.  He  is  made,  it  would 
surely  seem,  for  an  ultimate  goal  of  satisfaction, 
where  the  fruits  of  his  life,  adequate  and  fitting, 
shall  be  gathered. 

But  what  wages  ?  what  reward  shall  satisfy  ? 
what  coin  shall  be  paid  ?  What  can  pay  a  man, 
endowed  with  that  wisdom  which  is  a  pulsation 
of  the  divine,  working  out  the  life  which  such 
wisdom  vitalizes,  —  what  can  pay  a  man  for  liv- 
ing ?  Nay,  when  we  put  it  this  way,  we  see  at  once 
that  the  whole  idea  of  work  and  wages,  an  idea 

214 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

naturally  established  under  a  regime  of  moral  law, 
must  needs  pass  sooner  or  later  under  searching 
revision.  Some  sage  whose  common  sense  has 
retained  its  rigorous  sanity,  who  can  see  straight 
and  see  both  sides  of  a  thing,  some  wise  man  like 
Ecclesiastes  will  surely  rise  to  analyze  that  domi- 
nant dispensation  of  service  and  reward,  and  tell 
the  world  how  far  its  value  extends  and  where  its 
limitations  begin.  This  is  his  large  service,  salu- 
tary but  in  a  degree  thankless,  to  his  age,  to  all 
ages,  to  the  growing  evolution  of  Wisdom.  And 
the  answer  which  his  book  holds  in  solution  is  this: 
Nothing  can  pay  a  man  for  living  but  life  itself. 
Life  is  an  ultimate  fact.  It  cannot  be  bartered  for 
anything  else;  it  will  accept  no  equivalent.  Any- 
thing else  put  in  the  balance  with  life,  as  wages,  as 
gain,  as  achievement;  anything  whatever  external- 
ized from  life  and  hoped-in  for  a  stay  or  appease- 
ment or  gratification  of  the  soul,  inevitably  turns 
out  to  be  vanity,  vapor,  a  futile,  elusive  breath  of 
air.  Any  possible  reward  of  life,  to  be  rewarding 
at  all,  must  be  a  reward  not  in  coin  but  in  kind, 
and  must  pay  itself  in  as  you  go  along.  Life  must 
be  its  own  reward  and  blessedness  or  nothing. 
Now  we  can  see  why  Ecclesiastes'  cry  of  vanity  is 
so  trenchant  and  absolute,  and  why  he  refuses  to 
open  up  to  men  the  too  convenient  refuge  of  the 

215 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

future.  The  problem  of  life  must  be  worked  out 
without  reference  to  external  environment  and 
without  reference  to  time.  It  does  no  good  to 
postpone;  the  issue  cannot  be  postponed,  for  that 
would  be  letting  it  go.  I  heard  once  of  a  quaint 
old  catechism  in  which  were  this  question  and  an- 
swer: "  What  is  the  penalty  of  meanness  ?"  The 
answer  was,  "  More  meanness."  We  can  frame 
nothing  but  a  similar  question  and  answer  here. 
What  is  the  reward  of  life  ?  More  life. 

This  is  the  master-idea  that  we  need  to  grasp 
firmly  and  keep  in  control,  on  our  journey  through 
the  undeniably  complex  tissue  of  Ecclesiastes' 
thought.  It  must  be  kept  in  mind  to  nerve  and 
support  us,  like  the  order  of  a  great  commander 
on  the  field  of  battle,  or  the  deep  enthusiasm 
of  the  cause  that  has  inspired  us.  For  the  idea 
swallows  itself  up  in  the  smoke  and  dust  of  a 
baffling  world  and  social  chaos  and  an  effete  dis- 
pensation; and  while  men  are  in  the  turmoil  of 
battle  the  bounds  of  their  cause  seem  lost,  they 
look  up  to  heaven  and  see  only  the  smoke.  We 
must  carry  this  idea  with  us,  that  Ecclesiastes, 
who  for  his  time  and  regime  is  the  commander 
and  expositor  of  Wisdom,  is  moved  to  set  forth 
the  supreme  values  of  life,  and  make  them  good 
for  all  time  against  the  lower  and  temporary 

216 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

values  with  which  men  deceive  and  befog  them- 
selves. He  speaks  as  one  who  was  a  king;  but  he 
is  not  speaking  in  behalf  of  any  ideal  or  privilege 
that  kings  can  monopolize,  or  that  the  wealthy 
and  educated  classes  can  arrogate  to  themselves. 
Rather,  his  sympathy  is  with  man  as  man,  in  all 
his  labor;  and  the  ideal  he  seeks  in  Wisdom  is  to 
lay  hold  on  every  promising  resource,  every  can- 
didate for  the  claim  of  reward,  until  he  shall  see 
"  what  is  the  good  thing  for  the  sons  of  men  to  do 
under  the  heavens,  all  the  days  of  their  life."  And 
so  as  he  looks  on  the  one  side  at  wealth  and  honor 
and  refinement  and  luxury,  it  is  to  show  how 
empty  it  all  is  by  itself;  and  on  the  other  side  at 
the  welter  of  labor  and  hardship  and  injustice,  it 
is  to  show  how  genuine  a  spring  of  wisdom  and 
knowledge  and  joy  may  still  exist  in  the  unbought 
personality  to  make  the  most  untoward  circum- 
stances endurable.  Yet  he  has  no  quarrel  either 
with  royalty  or  with  labor.  Like  Marcus  Aurelius 
he  can  say, — 

"Even  in  a  palace  life  may  be  led  well;" 

but  none  the  less  he  shuns  not  to  enter 

"the  stifling  den 

Of  common  life,  where  crowded  up  pell-mell, 
Our  freedom  for  a  little  bread  we  sell;"  l 

1  Matthew  Arnold's  poem,  Worldly  Peace. 
217 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

and  for  high  and  lowly  alike  he  is  supremely  con- 
cerned to  rescue  the  living  truth  that 

"  The  aids  to  nobler  life  are  all  within." 

I  think  we  may  say  this  is  no  unworthy  theme  for 
a  scripture  book  or  a  philosophy. 

IV 

It  has  seemed  necessary,  in  describing  a  book 
so  puzzling  as  this,  to  spend  unusual  time  in  clear- 
ing away  obscuring  fogs  and  getting  the  master- 
idea,  the  illuminating  clue.  And  now  that  we 
enter  the  closer  view  of  the  book  itself,  all  that 
we  need  to  do  is  to  point  out  the  more  salient 
landmarks  and  note  how  consistently  they  slope 
upward  to  a  mountain  height  of  sound  sense 
and  wisdom. 

His  opening  cry,  "  Vanity  of  vanities,  all  is 
vanity,"  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  point  of  departure, 
not  a  point  of  approach.  It  concedes  the  vanity 
of  the  world  and  life,  in  order  to  go  on  and  tell 
men  what  to  do  about  it,  what  practical  conclusion 
to  draw.  And  he  peals  it  out  so  abruptly  and 
roundly  not  because  he  is  in  despair,  but  because 
at  the  outset  he  will  startle  men  in  the  place  where 
their  vain  hopes  are  centred  and  make  them  think. 
And  as  soon  as  he  has  uttered  this  exclamation, 

218 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

just  as  Satan  did  before  him  in  the  Book  of  Job, 
he  opens  the  whole  profound  issue  in  a  question: 
"  What  profit  hath  man  in  all  his  labor,  which 
he  laboreth  under  the  sun  ?" 

This  book,  then,  it  would  seem,  is  going  to  deal 
with  the  profits  of  life,  what  they  are  and  what 
they  are  worth  —  if  indeed  there  are  any;  it  is 
going  to  sift  that  matter  of  reward  to  the  bottom. 
What  profit  ?  the  Hebrew  word,  yitbron,  is  much 
used  throughout  the  book,  and  evidently  plays 
an  important  part  in  its  body  of  counsel.  The 
word  means  literally  surplusage,  residuum.  What 
is  there  left  over,  what  net  proceeds,  when  the 
laborer  has  done  his  work,  when  he  goes  home  and 
takes  his  wages  ?  It  is  virtually  a  grand  summing 
up  of  life,  as  it  were  a  posting  and  balancing  of 
the  books;  and  all  this  in  the  terms  which  are 
most  nearly  the  idiom  of  every  life,  the  terms  of 
labor,  of  activity,  of  earned  wages.  Every  man 
has  a  work  to  do,  whether  it  is  paid  for  or  not, 
whether  done  in  joy  or  in  sour  rebellion;  it  is  the 
lot  to  which  God  and  his  own  nature  have 
appointed  him,  and  it  is  the  vehicle  of  his  talents, 
his  bent,  his  skill,  his  range  of  interests.  He  is 
not  here  to  play,  or  to  vegetate,  or  to  adjust  exist- 
ence to  an  ideal  of  ease  or  luxury,  whether  now 
or  hereafter;  he  is  here  to  work,  to  put  himself  by 

219 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

the  side  of  God  among  the  creative  forces.  This 
Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  seeking  the  reward  of  life, 
steers  straight  for  the  field  of  wholesome  labor; 
it  is  beyond  other  scriptures  a  workingman's  book. 
And  the  solution  it  contains  is  expressed  in  the 
idiom  of  the  workingman,  who  though  he  may 
be  obscure  and  ignored,  is  yet  the  real  strength 
and  sinew  of  society. 

j 

But  the  profit,  the  surplusage  —  what  is  there 
in  all  this  labor  which  looks  beyond  the  labor, 
to  compensate  for  the  hardship  and  the  toil  ? 
The  question  as  first  asked  has  an  austere  ring; 
plaintive,  perhaps,  if  asked  in  bewilderment,  or  if 
asked  in  prescient  wisdom,  truculent  and  defiant, 
as  if  it  would  challenge  any  answer  but  negative. 
And  indeed,  from  the  background  on  which  it  is 
first  projected,  the  cosmic  background  of  nature 
and  history,  there  comes  back  nothing  but  nega- 
tive suggestion.  What  surplusage,  what  thing  left 
over,  is  revealed  anywhere  in  the  on-goings  of  the 
world  ?  Generations  come  and  go,  the  winds 
circle  back  and  forth,  suns  rise  and  set  and  come 
panting  back  to  the  place  where  they  rose,  as  if 
the  day's  round  had  tired  them  out.  "  All  things," 
the  sage  says,  "are  labor-weary;  no  man  can 
describe  it."  And  what  comes  of  it  ?  It  is  like 
a  huge  wheel  of  being,  which  turns  on  its  vast 
220 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

axis,  and  returns  on  itself,  but  never  gets  for- 
ward. There  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  The 
coming  generation  passes  under  the  yoke  of  the 
same  old  law  of  being,  beginning  again  the  same 
old  task  as  did  its  predecessor;  and  its  individ- 
ual work  in  the  sum  of  things  is  speedily  for- 
gotten, nor  does  it  add  to  the  pile  anything  that 
can  be  noted  or  named.  You  recall  that  gentle, 
kindly  old  lama,  in  Kipling's  novel  of  "  Kim," 
whose  soul  was  so  dizzied  and  depressed  by  the 
great  wheel  of  life  to  which  he  felt  himself  bound, 
and  who  made  lifelong  pilgrimage  and  search  to 
get  free  from  it.  At  its  outset,  as  we  note, 
our  book  enters  that  same  vein  of  Buddhistic 
imagination;  figuring  life  as  a  restless  rotation, 
returning  evermore  on  itself,  with  no  residuum 
of  achievement  or  increased  vital  store  to  show 
for  its  revolution,  and  no  clearly  ascertainable 
progress.  This,  we  may  say,  is  the  first  report 
of  the  Hebrew  imagination,  when  once  it  tran- 
scends national  bounds  and  looks  upon  its  tread- 
mill regime  of  law  from  a  cosmic  point  of  view. 
We  shall  note  the  reason  of  this  feeling  later. 
Meanwhile,  this  observed  fact,  more  truly  than 
the  crookedness  of  men  or  the  enigmas  of  fate, 
is  the  real  cause  of  the  book's  abysmal  sadness; 
and  it  is  the  background  on  which  Ecclesiastes 

221 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

projects  his  counsel  of  life.  It  is  as  if  he  had 
chosen  the  sternest  thinkable  situation  of  things, 
so  that  no  element  of  the  problem  should  escape 
to  baffle  us  more.  If  cheer  can  be  gathered  from 
such  a  situation  as  this,  it  is  a  cheer  all-potent, 
it  is  a  victory  indeed. 

From  this  point  onward  be  betakes  himself 
to  the  details  of  the  world's  life;  setting  himself 
"to  explore  and  survey  by  wisdom  concerning 
all  that  is  wrought  under  the  heavens."  He  gives 
first  an  account  of  his  own  kingly  enterprises, 
in  building  palaces  and  making  parks  and  accu- 
mulating wealth  and  servants  and  pleasures 
and  luxuries;  laboring  evidently  to  describe  the 
result  when  man,  ideally  situated  and  endowed, 
surrounds  himself  with  all  the  remunerations  of 
life,  all  the  fruits  of  skill  and  taste  and  labor  that 
heart  can  desire.  It  is  our  problem  of  reward 
reduced  to  the  induction  of  fact.  We  know  what 
the  outcome  is.  From  every  quest,  every  enter- 
prise, every  achievement,  he  returns  with  the 
sickening  sense  of  vanity  and  a  chase  after  wind. 
There  is  no  profit,  no  net  proceed,  to  add  to  his 
soul's  assets  under  the  stin.  It  is  not  in  the  power 
of  houses  and  lands,  of  wealth  and  luxury,  of 
anything  external  to  the  man,  to  be  a  real  reward. 
It  may  give  pleasure  in  the  getting,  or  at  least  the 

222 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 
work  and  skill  laid  out  on  it  may;  but  as  soon 
as  it  is  externalized,  as  soon  as  it  exists  outside 
the  man  to  be  looked  upon,  it  turns  to  disillu- 
sion and  vanity.  What,  in  the  end,  is  that  thing 
reward  ? 

Wherever  he  turns,  it  is  always  just  so.  He 
enters  the  world  of  times  and  seasons,  wherein 
every  deed  has  its  occasion  and  every  man's 
work  its  opportunity.  He  imposes  no  restriction, 
for  even  good  or  wicked  work;  gives  man  free 
hand  to  test  the  case  by  using  every  occasion 
as  he  will;  enters  the  high  places  where  injus- 
tice and  wickedness  are  rife,  and  merely  notes 
that  these  are  having  their  day,  and  that  the 
time  for  judgment  on  them  will  come  too.  It 
is  only  a  picture  in  a  little  more  detail  of  the 
same  virtual  rotation  that  he  saw  in  the  world  of 
space;  things  coming  round  to  the  same  point  in 
their  orbit,  with  no  gathered  result,  and  nothing 
but  vanity  to  add  to  the  strivings  of  man.  Then 
into  the  confused  world  of  human  activities  he 
enters;  into  the  world  of  oppressions,  and  busi- 
ness rivalries,  and  unsocial  isolation  of  hearts,  and 
that  selfish  strife  for  wealth  whose  ultimate  logic 
is  to  separate  every  man  from  his  fellow  and  make 
him  dwell  alone.  Then  into  that  mysterious  world 
wherein  fate  has  taken  our  measure,  and  decreed 

223 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

that  when  a  man  gets  all  he  wants,  yet  is  his 
soul  not  filled  ;  he  is  still  as  lean  as  ever,  and 
hungry  for  something  that  is  more  than  meat. 
Then,  even  when  he  brings  his  wisdom  to  con- 
sider it  all  and  interpret,  even  the  divine  endow- 
ment of  intellect  is  not  always  to  be  counted 
on  as  unerring.  A  strange  perversity  has  crept 
in.  God  made  men  upright,  indeed,  but  they 
have  sought  out  many  inventions,  many  evasions, 
and  accommodations,  and  tortuosities  of  appli- 
cation, by  which  they  have  bent  the  laws  of 
wisdom  to  their  own  evil  will. 

Thus  the  huge  fact  of  vanity  seems  —  or  say 
rather  it  is  designedly  so  portrayed  as  —  to  fill 
the  world  full,  and  leave  no  room  for  anything 
but  perpetual  disillusion.  Then  further,  looming 
up  inevitable  in  the  path  before  every  man,  is  an- 
other fact,  stern,  chilling,  inexplicable,  the  fact  of 
death.  One  event  befalleth  them  all.  However 
wise  the  man,  and  however  rich  in  the  rewards 
of  wisdom,  he  must  lie  down  in  the  same  grave 
with  the  fool,  leaving  all  his  gains  to  a  dolt  or  a 
spendthrift;  nay,  must  mix  his  dust  with  that  of 
the  beast,  for  one  breath  have  they  both.  There 
is  nothing  to  show,  as  between  man  and  beast, 
which  spirit  goes  upward  toward  heaven  and 
which  downward  to  earth.  Here,  then,  the  ver- 

224 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

diet  of  universal  vanity  seems  to  reach  its  ut- 
most, its  hopeless  extreme.  "This  is  an  evil," 
he  says,  "in  all  that  is  wrought  under  the  sun, 
that  there  is  one  event  to  all;  and  this  too,  that 
the  heart  of  the  sons  of  men  is  full  of  evil,  and 
madness  is  in  their  hearts  while  they  live,  and 
after  that  —  to  the  dead."1  Here,  however  you 
judge  it,  is  where  the  matter  ends.  Ecclesiastes 
does  not,  like  Job,  call  God's  justice  to  account. 
He  takes  matters  as  they  are,  as  the  unprejudiced 
testimony  of  the  eyes  reveals  them  to  us.  Such, 
then,  is  the  verdict  rolled  up  relentlessly  on  life 
and  the  world,  by  one  who  set  out  honestly  to 
test  the  sufficingness  of  all  that  earthly  exist- 
ence can  give.  What  is  that  thing  reward,  after 
all  ?  The  evil  is  not  that  man  cannot  get  what 
he  wants;  he  can  get  what  he  bends  heart  and 
energy  to  get;  whatever  it  is,  he  can  get  it.  The 
evil  unspeakable  would  be  to  be  satisfied  when 
he  gets  it,  for  that  would  be,  to  be  an  earth-bound 
fool.  But  from  this  evil  he  is  rescued  by  what 
seems  to  earthly  view  a  strange  limitation;  what  is 
rather  a  providential  maladjustment.  If  he  will 
let  his  largeness  of  heart  speak,  or  if,  as  Ecclesi- 
astes puts  it,  his  heart  still  rules  by  wisdom,  it 
is  the  divine  decreed  law  of  his  being  that  the 

1  Ecclesiastes  ix,  3. 
225 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

reward  should  turn  out  to  be  no  reward  at  all. 
All  the  labor  of  man  is  for  his  mouth,  yet  is  the 
soul  not  filled. 

But  here  the  question  might  be  raised,  Are  not 
the  labor  and  the  toil  and  the  disappointment 
and  the  vanity,  —  are  not  these  the  sternly  allotted 
earthly  part,  and  does  not  the  reward  come  in 
the  life  hereafter  ?  We  are  so  familiar  with  this 
adjustment  of  things,  that  doubtless  the  com- 
pensating element  of  another  world,  a  life  beyond 
the  grave,  has  risen  before  us  ere  this  as  the 
solution  of  the  problem.  But  right  here  it  is 
that  Ecclesiastes,  coming  into  sharp  conflict  with 
his  age,  supplies  what  though  at  first  thought  the 
most  sceptical  is  in  reality  the  sanest,  sturdiest 
plea  of  his  book.  All  the  vigor  of  his  reaction, 
indeed,  rises  ultimately  from  this  conflict  with 
the  tendencies  and  sentiments  of  his  time.  Though, 
to  be  sure,  the  first  sound  of  it  is  like  a  cold,  harsh 
agnosticism.  You  do  not  know,  he  says,  what 
there  is  beyond  the  grave;  no  one  can  bring  man 
to  see  what  shall  be  after  him.  And  because  you 
do  not  know,  you  cannot  make  a  motive  of  it, 
cannot  build  life  upon  it.  Time  and  again  he 
talks  in  this  strain,  and  with  an  animus,  a  sharp- 
ness, a  heat,  which  betrays  the  fact  that  specu- 
lation on  future  things,  and  wordy  vaticinations 

226 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 
concerning  them,  are  in  the  air,  and  by  their  volu- 
bility and  essential  shallowness  are  irritating  him. 
And  this  doubtless  was  the  state  of  things  when 
he  wrote.  We  know  how  little  the  Old  Testa- 
ment says  about  immortality.  We  have  noticed, 
too,  how  the  Wisdom  literature  thus  far  has  made 
up  its  scheme  of  rewards  and  retributions  with 
reference  merely  to  this  present  life,  and  has 
made  no  promises  for  the  beyond.  The  doctrine 
of  immortality  came  into  the  Hebrew  mind  late. 
From  the  tone  of  this  book  of  Ecclesiastes,  we 
judge  that  it  was  just  finding  its  way  into  popu- 
lar thought  and  discussion  when  the  book  was 
written,  about  two  hundred  years  before  Christ. 
The  doctrine  came  in,  it  is  thought,  by  the  way 
of  the  Greek  philosophy;  and  would  seem  to 
have  been  a  very  fascinating  idea,  a  kind  of  talk- 
making  fad,  like  theosophy  or  the  wonders  of 
radium,  especially  with  the  higher  classes,  the 
pace-setters  of  public  opinion.  Our  book,  open- 
ing as  it  does  the  whole  question  of  reward, 
and  reducing  reward  as  such  to  vanity,  is  a  kind 
of  veto,  a  kind  of  old-fashioned  and  eld-fogy 
makeweight  against  the  new  doctrine.  Ecclesi- 
astes does  not  say  it  is  not  true;  he  simply  main- 
tains that  it  is  not  proved,  not  evident.  Man 
cannot  see  what  shall  be  hereafter  beyond  the 

227    ** 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

grave,  any  more  than  he  can  see  what  shall  be 
after  him  on  the  earth.  Hence  it  is  folly  to  bank 
upon  it,  or  make  up  life  with  reference  to  it. 
There  is  the  great  peril  to  manhood,  a  peril  to 
which  on  many  another  account  man  is  already 
too  prone.  The  influence  of  such  a  speculative 
doctrine,  as  speculative,  is  to  postpone  life,  to 
flee  from  the  thing  that  you  cannot  get  or  enjoy 
here  to  some  other  place  and  some  other  time, 
in  which  the  conditions  are  fancied  to  be  more 
favorable.  If  you  do  that,  you  are  still  set  on 
the  external  reward;  the  same  old  desire  of  get- 
ting some  kind  of  cash  equivalent,  something  in 
environment  and  not  in  you,  that  you  can  sell 
your  life  for,  still  possesses  you.  You  have  only 
transferred  the  realization  of  it  to  another  region, 
to  the  supposed  Elysian  existence  on  which  your 
soul  enters  after  death.  All  this,  in  Ecclesiastes' 
view,  is  enervating,  emasculating;  it  is  giving  up 
life  itself,  with  its  splendid  possibilities,  for  a 
dream  of  ease  or  rest,  or  satisfying  wages  some- 
where else.  Hence  his  impassioned  cry  of  vanity, 
directed  against  everything  that  man  cherishes 
external  to  himself,  whether  it  be  in  space  or 
time,  in  the  earth  or  in  the  sky,  in  the  body  or 
out  of  it.  You  cannot  forecast  the  future,  he 
says,  and  even  if  you  could,  it  is  not  in  the 
228 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

power  of  a  change  of  worlds  or  a  change  in  time 
to  change  your  essential  nature.  In  a  word,  the 
regards  of  man  must  be  brought  in  from  that 
vague  other  world,  with  its  speculative  satis- 
factions, to  which  he  is  so  allured  to  flee,  just  as 
they  must  be  brought  in  from  any  mere  environ- 
ment whatsoever,  and  centred  at  home,  in  the 
citadel  and  kingdom  of  his  own  soul,  where  the 
work  of  life  must  be  done  and  its  problems 
solved.  Thus  the  assertion  of  vanity  and  the 
negation  of  future  outlook  are  but  two  sides  of 
one  massive  plea  for  the  intrinsic  man. 


Nor  is  the  book  all  reaction  and  remonstrance. 
It  builds  as  well  as  pulls  down.  But  it  begins  its 
upbuilding  at  the  abiding  foundation.  From  the 
repressive  warning  we  have  described  he  sets  out 
to  create  a  real,  positive  tissue  of  life,  an  intrin- 
sic manhood  and  character  that  shall  be  a  source 
of  joy  and  satisfaction,  and  thus  its  own  reward. 
This  he  does  by  the  plain  every-day  means  pe- 
culiar to  the  Wisdom  literature.  Approaching 
concrete  experiences,  he  endeavors  step  by  step, 
by  bringing  out  the  strong  and  honest  and  per- 
manent element  of  each  one,  as  it  comes  along,  to 
evolve  an  authentic  answer  to  that  ever-control- 

229 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

ling  question,  What  is  that  thing  reward  ?  What 
surplusage,  residuum,  profit,  advantage  (the  word 
yithron  has  many  shades  of  meaning)  may  inhere 
in  this  or  that  deed  or  trial,  task  or  achievement; 
what  that  remains  in  the  soul,  a  permanent  asset 
of  manhood  ? 

So  these  things  come  out  between  the  lines. 

O 

As,  for  instance,  he  looks  back  on  those  vast 
enterprises  of  building  and  design  which  as  king 
he  instituted,  even  while  to  his  dismay  he  has 
discovered  that  they  did  not  appease  his  soul 
as  finished  works,  yet  from  the  doing  of  them 
he  has  derived  a  genuine  joy.  The  glad  activity 
of  planning  and  executing,  the  soul  that  he  put 
into  it,  was  the  real  portion  that  remained  with 
him  from  all  his  labor.  Then,  too,  there  was  the 
wisdom  that  he  laid  out  on  it;  that  stayed  by 
him,  he  could  live  in  that,  could  build  on  that; 
as  superior  to  folly,  he  said,  as  light  to  darkness. 
It  is  interesting  thus  to  follow  all  his  little  ap- 
plications of  wisdom  to  the  details  of  life,  as  he 
shows  what  in  the  dictates  of  common  sense  or 
in  the  interests  of  soul-building  is  the  better  alter- 
native or  ensures  a  result  of  practical  advantage. 
Equally  striking  it  is  also  to  note  how  he  finds 
here  and  there  in  manhood  nature,  in  the  com- 
monest places,  a  mysterious  pulsation,  or  larger 

230 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

tendency,  which  seems  to  adapt  him  to  a  state  of 
being  more  spacious  than  this;  and  how  he  takes 
note  of  the  hunger  for  what  is  more  than  meat, 
or  the  wisdom  beyond  the  demand  of  this  work- 
and-wages  life,  this  tomb-bounded  existence. 

I  cannot  stay,  of  course,  to  trace  all  these. 
They  sum  together  in  jwo  profoundly  vital  ele- 
ments which  make  the  book  add  to  the  true 
wealth  of  life  far  more  than  it  has  seemed  to 
take  away.  For  in  the  stead  of  vanity  and  vapor 
they  provide  solid  substance,  and  a  vital  energy 
in  the  place  of  that  dreamy  speculation  which 
would  lose  itself  in  unexplored  ranges  of  being. 

As  he  is  thinking  how  the  toil  of  men  and  their 
times  work  together,  here,  for  the  first  element, 
is  the  way  he  makes  the  fact  reach  out  to  larger 
things.  "Everything,"  he  says,  "hath  He  made 
beautiful  in  its  time;  also  He  hath  put  eternity 
in  their  heart;  —  yet  not  so  that  man  findeth 
out  the  work  which  God  hath  wrought,  from  the 
beginning,  and  to  the  end." *  This,  as  we  see,  is 
the  vital,  energizing  fact  to  set  over  against  our 
ignorance  of  the  future.  And  it  is  all-sufficient; 
it  is  better  than  knowledge.  The  power  of  the 
future,  the  pulsation  of  an  eternal  energy,  of 
the  permanent,  of  that  which  transcends  this 

1  Ecclesiastes  ii,  n. 
231 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

earthly  life,  is  already  within  us,  moulding  our 
work  and  ideals  to  a  larger  model,  impelling  us 
to  emulate  the  work  of  Him  whose  deed  is  for- 
ever. This  it  does,  though  it  denies  the  power  of 
seeing  onward  to  the  end  or  back  to  the  begin- 
ning; it  is  not  an  occultism,  or  a  vaticination,  but 
a  hidden  vitality.  In  the  consciousness  of  such 
an  endowment  as  this  we  can  well  be  content 
to  waive  speculation  on  the  mystery  or  the  bliss 
or  the  splendor  of  a  post-mortem  existence;  our 
immortality  has  become,  as  it  were,  a  present 
possession. 

This  is  one  of  the  two  vital  elements.  The 
other  is  a  homelier,  more  prosaic  thing;  but  when 
we  think  how  universally  our  life  is  centred  in  it, 
and  how  undone  we  are  without  it,  we  cannot 
deny  it  the  royal  place  that  Ecclesiastes  accords 
it.  I  mean  our  work;  our  life's  distinctive  work, 
with  the  skill,  the  design,  the  joy,  the  potential- 
ities, the  healthful  creativeness  of  it.  It  is  mar- 
vellous how  slow  the  students  of  this  book  have 
been  to  discover  this  cardinal  feature  of  it;  this 
cheery  gospel  of  work,  promulgated  so  long  before 
Carlyle,  by  an  old  Hebrew  sage,  who  saw  that 
the  work  in  which  we  can  rejoice,  or  at  least 
the  rejoicing  in  it,  is  the  true  reward  of  living. 
"Blessed  is  the  man  that  has  found  his  work; 
232 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

let  him  seek  no  other  blessedness,"  the  modern 
sage  says;  but  long  before  him  the  ancient  sage 
had  drawn  out  of  the  turmoils  and  occasions  of 
life  this  conclusion :  "  Wherefore  I  saw  that  there 
is  nothing  better  than  that  man  should  rejoice 
in  his  own  works;  for  that  is  his  portion.  For 
who  shall  bring  him  to  see  what  shall  be  after 
him?"1 

Nor  is  this  given  as  a  last  resort,  as  the  only 
thing  man  can  make  of  a  bad  job.  It  is  in  itself 
a  blessedness  to  sweeten  not  only  the  ills  but 
the  good  fortunes  of  life,  adding  the  saving  in- 
gredient, the  coefficient  without  which  riches  and 
boundless  plenty  were  vain.  "  Behold,"  he  says 
again,  "what  I  have  seen!  good  that  is  comely: 
to  eat  and  to  drink  and  to  see  good  in  all  his  labor 
which  he  laboreth  under  the  sun,  all  the  days  of 
his  life  which  God  hath  given  him;  for  this  is  his 
portion,  yea,  every  man  to  whom  God  hath  given 
riches  and  goods,  and  hath  enabled  him  to  eat 
thereof,  and  to  obtain  his  portion,  and  to  rejoice 
in  his  labor, — THIS  is  the  gift  of  God.  For 
he  will  not  much  remember  the  days  of  his  life, 
when  God  respondeth  to  him  in  joy  of  heart." 2 

This  is  in  very  different  tone  from  that  strain 

1  Ecclesiastes  iii,  22. 

2  Ecclesiastes  v,  18-20. 

233 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

of  disillusion  in  which  the  book  began ;  and  yet 
from  the  beginning  he  has  through  all  bafflements 
steered  straight  for  this;  he  has  found  the  solid 
and  substantial  thing  for  the  sake  of  which  he 
concluded  all  under  vanity.  And  we  can  see  how 
he  has  done  it.  He  has  gently  forced  the  soul 
inward  upon  itself,  to  the  place  where  the  intrinsic 
man  is,  where  are  his  aptitudes  and  his  joys,  where 
his  ideals  germinate,  and  where  eating  and  drink- 
ing are  the  symbol  not  of  sensualism,  but  of 
healthy,  happy,  care-free  well-being.  Get  the  soul 
of  man  at  home  within,  rejoicing  in  his  congenial 
work,  responding  loyally  to  the  pulsation  of  eter- 
nity in  the  heart,  and  he  need  ask  no  odds  of 
outside  things,  for  reward  or  wages;  he  has  his 
reward,  his  ultimate  good,  measured  in  the  coin 
of  the  life  itself.  Would  you  sell  your  life  for  any- 
thing but  this  ? 

Of  other  features  of  this  fascinating  book  — 
how  in  face  of  the  puzzles  and  untowardness  of 
being  the  kindly  sage  is  laboring  all  the  while 
to  upbuild  a  soul  of  manhood  which  shall  stand 
foursquare  to  all  the  winds  that  blow;  how  he 
sets  man  before  God  in  reverent,  loyal  silence, 
and  before  rulers  in  reticent,  temperate,  tactful 
speech;  how  he  sets  man  before  mysterious  fate 
and  chance,  and  even  before  his  law  of  righteous- 

234 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

ness  in  self-respecting  wisdom  and  soul-mastery; 
how  he  sets  man  before  the  pageant  of  life  in 
the  energy  and  faith  of  young  manhood,  while 
his  powers  are  at  their  best  and  rising  upward, 
"ere  yet  the  evil  days  are  come,"  the  days  of 
senility  and  decrepitude,  —  of  all  these  I  must  not 
speak  further.  It  is  only  the  merest  sketch  that 
I  have  given,  but  it  must  suffice.  And  perhaps 
from  it  we  may  be  able  to  see  how  the  temper 
and  presupposition  of  things  are  shifted  from 
the  commercial  to  the  spiritual;  to  see  also  by 
what  consistent  steps  of  advance  he  reaches  the 
height  where  he  can  leave  the  soul  all  ready  for 
the  judgment,  fearing  God  and  keeping  his  com- 
mandments, just  as  the  sages  did  before  him,  and 
finding  in  such  reverence  and  obedience  the  sum 
of  manhood.  Ecclesiastes  ends,  like  Job,  with 
an  appeal  for  judgment.  But  while  in  Job  the 
verdict  was  given  by  God  Himself,  in  the  later 
book,  though  God  is  in  heaven  and  we  on  earth, 
we  are  somehow  brought  consciously  nearer  the 
point  where  we  can  see  as  God  sees,  and  pro- 
nounce judgment  on  ourselves;  where  with  con- 
fidence we  may  await  the  verdict  on  "every,  hid- 
den thing,  whether  it  be  good  or  whether  it  be 
evil."1 

1  Ecclesiastes  xii,  14. 
235 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

VI 

To  what  stage  and  outlook-point  now,  as  regards 
our  growing  body  of  Wisdom,  have  we  arrived  ? 
Was  this  insidious  flank  attack  needed,  and  has 
the  structure  of  Wisdom,  surviving,  taken  on  any 
new  element  of  beauty  and  strength,  to  repair 
the  weak  places  and  round  out  what  was  lack- 
ing? 

As  we  pass  from  the  Book  of  Job,  with  its 
large  and  lucid  Wisdom  issue,  to  this  intricate 
Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  it  is  like  going  from  the 
presence-chamber  of  a  king  to  the  confusion  and 
turmoil  of  a  battlefield.  We  carry  the  king's 
commission  with  us,  and  we  know  that  he  watches 
over  the  conflict  from  afar;  but  for  a  time  all 
outlook  and  direction  seem  hidden,  as  we  are 
swallowed  up  in  smoke  and  earthly  vapors.  To 
deal  with  God  as  Job  did,  rinding  His  will  and 
out  of  trouble  recovering  sense  of  His  loving 
kindness,  is  a  comparatively  plain  issue.  To 
deal  with  men,  who  though  created  upright 
have  sought  out  many  inventions,  is  a  task  full  of 
perplexity  and  uncertainty.  Hence  the  feeling  of 
puzzlement  that  comes  upon  us  as  we  pass  from 
Job  to  Ecclesiastes.  It  seems  at  first  as  if  the  pro- 
gress of  the  manhood  ideal  had  retrograded,  as 

236 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

if  the  bounds  of  righteousness  were  lost,  as  if  the 
God  who  in  Job  was  so  near  had  become  remote, 
"an  absentee  God  sitting  outside  His  universe 
and  seeing  it  go;"  and  as  if  to  be  wise  were  no 
longer  to  be  simply  pious,  but  to  be  able  to  man- 
age things,  or  to  bear  the  burden  of  a  perverse 
world,  whether  with  strict  distinguishing  of  good- 
ness and  wickedness  or  not.  Ecclesiastes,  in  fact, 
seems  to  throw  all  questions  open;  and  in  his 
quest  for  that  "good  thing  for  the  sons  of  men 
to  do  under  the  heavens  all  the  days  of  their 
life,"  he  freely  lays  hold  on  folly  as  well  as  Wis- 
dom, as  if  the  foolishness  of  folly  were  still  a 
thing  to  be  proved.  Nay,  he  goes  so  far  as  to 
say,  "  Be  not  too  righteous,  and  play  not  the  sage 
to  excess;  wherefore,"  he  ironically  asks,  "wilt 
thou  undo  thyself?"1  As  if  one  could  be,  accord- 
ing to  a  modern  epigram,  so  good  as  to  be  good 
for  nothing.  Does  it  not  look  as  if  the  tone  and 
standard  of  things  were  lowered,  —  as  if  high 
Wisdom  itself  had  a  set-back  ? 

Well,  let  us  see  what  ideals  have  thus  far  been 
evolved.  In  each  of  the  books  we  have  studied 
Wisdom  has  shown  itself  in  a  distinctive  aspect; 
as  if  it  were  the  will  of  history  to  show  her  fea- 
tures one  by  one,  as  men  were  grown  to  appro- 

1  Ecclesiastes  vii,  16. 
237 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

priate  them.  In  Proverbs,  Wisdom,  the  contrast 
to  folly,  was  almost  synonymous  with  sanity; 
she  was  making  her  cause  good  against  fatuity 
and  madness,  and  determining  from  what  whole- 
some beginning  and  temper,  as  related  to  God 
and  human  nature,  to  set  out  on  her  exploration 
of  the  deeps  of  being.  In  Job,  Wisdom  had  come 
to  be  about  synonymous  with  integrity;  this  we 
saw  in  the  patriarch's  utter  truth  with  himself 
and  God,  and  in  his  rejection  of  every  false  thing, 
as  felt  in  the  unfeeling  dogmas  of  philosophy, 
and  as  unearthed  in  the  treachery  of  his  friends. 
What  new  aspect  shall  come  to  light  here  in 
Ecclesiastes  ? 

As  we  have  seen,  God  had  set  a  hedge  round 
Job  on  every  side;  and  though  for  a  little  that 
hedge  was  broken,  while  Job  proved  that  he  was 
true  not  for  the  hedge  but  for  the  truth,  yet  it 
closed  again,  and  Job  rounded  out  a  long  and 
prosperous  life  in  the  felt  presence  and  care  of 
God.  In  other  words,  here  was  Wisdom  drawing 
support  from  constant  dependence  on  its  begin- 
ning and  source.  Might  it  not  presumably  have 
become  in  course  of  time  a  kind  of  bolstered-up 
Wisdom,  always  leaning  consciously  on  a  stronger 
Arm;  and  might  not  thus  its  vitality  have  come 
to  seem  a  matter  of  course,  a  kind  of  law  of  na- 

238 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 
ture  which  could  be  used  without  the  keen  sense 
of  its  spiritual  worth  and  blessedness  ?  And  if  it 
had  so  evolved,  what  would  have  become  of  the 
manhood  initiative  ?  There  is  a  favorite  idea  of 
Browning's,  that  God's  way  with  man  is  to  with- 
draw Himself  and  stand  aside  a  little,  in  order 
that  man  may  have  a  chance  to  put  forth  his  own 
originativeness,  and  feel  out  his  way,  and  grow  as 
it  were  of  his  own  motion. 

"You  know  what  I  mean:   God's  all,  man's  naught: 
But  also,  God,  whose  pleasure  brought 
Man  into  being,  stands  away 
As  it  were  a  handbreadth  off,  to  give 
Room  for  the  newly-made  to  live, 
And  look  at  him  from  a  place  apart, 
And  use  his  gifts  of  brain  and  heart, 
Given,  indeed,  but  to  keep  forever. 
Who  speaks  of  man,  then,  must  not  sever 
Man's  very  elements  from  man, 
Saying,  'But  all  is  God's'  —  whose  plan 
Was  to  create  man  and  then  leave  him 
Able,  his  own  word  saith,  to  grieve  him, 
But  able  to  glorify  him  too, 
As  a  mere  machine  could  never  do, 
That  prayed  or  praised,  all  unaware 
Of  its  fitness  for  aught  but  praise  and  prayer, 
Made  perfect  as  a  thing  of  course."  * 

I  think  some  such  idea  as  this  is  in  control,  in 
the  Wisdom  that  is  set  before  man  in  Ecclesiastes. 
Man  is  given,  so  to  say,  an  individual  chance, 

1  Browning,  Christmas  Eve,  v. 
239 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM  ' 

that  he  may  prove  what  is  in  him  as  he  works 
his  way  among  the  confusions  and  untoward- 
ness  of  the  world.  He  is  to  prove  how  empty  are 
earth's  rewards,  unless  they  are  such  as  strike  in 
and  energize  the  soul.  In  a  word,  here  in  Eccle- 
siastes  Wisdom  has  become  virtually  a  synonym 
of  character:  it  is  the  native  manhood  discover- 
ing its  true  fibre  and  having  its  joy  therein,  as 
an  intrinsic  self-directive  thing,  as  a  work  God- 
appointed  and  God-accepted,  as  a  pulsation  of 
eternity  in  the  heart;  —  even  though  it  be  sepa- 
rated a  little  from  the  felt  supports  of  religion  or 
the  overmastering  pressure  of  divine  law.  So 
as  we  see,  Wisdom  is  not  thereby  retrograding 
or  becoming  irreverent.  Rather,  it  is  the  more 
truly  entering  upon  its  own,  as  a  second  nature 
of  manhood,  with  the  loyalty  to  its  secret  source 
so  ingrained  that  this  can  bear  to  be  unthought  of, 
like  breathing  or  the  process  of  digestion.  The 
perfection  of  Wisdom,  after  all,  its  culmination 
and  ripened  maturity,  is  character;  wherein  man 
at  last  has  naturalized  all  its  divine  elements  and 
made  them  thoroughly  his  own. 

At  the  beginning  it  may  have  seemed  a  dubious 
venture  when  man  in  his  native  endowment  of 
insight  set  out  to  explore  his  manhood,  without 
priest  and  prophet  at  hand  to  authenticate  his  way 

240 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

by  directions  from  heaven.  To  many  a  tenderly 
religious  mind  of  the  present  day  the  same  doubt 
has  risen;  and  such  trust  in  the  seemingly  undic- 
tated  intellect  has  been  deprecated  as  hazardous, 
or  reproached  as  impious;  has  been  called  ration- 
alism and  infidelity,  and  stigmatized  as  cutting 
loose  from  God.  Its  attitude  toward  miracles  and 
the  supernatural,  which  was  the  attitude  of  com- 
mon sense,  has  been  taken  as  the  antipathy  of 
a  depraved  heart.  In  this  way  a  whole  class  of 
investigators,  the  scientific,  has  been  brought 
under  opprobrium,  and  reckoned  outside  the  re- 
ligious camp;  while  on  their  part  they,  in  too 
hasty  retaliation,  have  fettered  their  deeper  insight 
by  assuming  that  religious  reverence  was  neither 
beginning  nor  end  of  their  wisdom.  There  has 
been  grievous  fault  on  both  sides.  But  here 
in  our  history  of  Wisdom  we  have  reached  the 
point  where  we  can  readjust  the  whole  conten- 
tion; can  look  back  and  see  what  ideal  part 
such  scientific  inquirers  and  their  inquiries  may 
play  in  the  hospitable  scripture  economy.  And 
what  we  see  gives  us  much  reassurance.  For 
not  only  have  these  sages,  beginning  with  the 
reverent  fear  of  God  and  clinging  to  it  through- 
out in  loyal  insight,  marched  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  priests  and  prophets;  they  have  acted  too 

241 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

as  a  tempering  factor,  a  kind  of  court  of  man- 
hood appeal,  bringing  back  even  orthodoxy  from 
its  too  hide-bound  notions,  and  by  their  centre 
and  flank  attacks  compelling  men's  ideals  to 
be  sane,  consistent,  liberal.  It  is  an  honorable 
record;  a  record  wherein  we  see  the  ideals  that 
had  become  hardened  or  murky  falling  into  sweet 
reasonableness  and  lucidity.  Thus  common  sense 
in  an  uncommon  degree  has  justified  its  mission 
in  the  sum  of  things,  and  so  far  from  being  a 
movement  away  from  God  has  proved  itself  a 
movement  toward  free  spirituality,  toward  the 
assured  strength  of  self-directive  character. 

In  its  voyage  of  interpretation  and  discov- 
ery Wisdom  must  needs  confront  the  two  great 
focal  problems  of  being  with  which  its  freedom 
is  involved:  God  and  immortality.  Neither  of 
these  can  be  ignored  in  any  penetrative  phi- 
losophy of  life.  How  Job  in  his  central  attack 
dealt  with  the  problem  of  God,  calling  the  con- 
ventional idea  into  court  and  demanding  that 
a  God  who  would  retain  his  allegiance  should 
be  Godlike,  we  have  seen.  It  was  the  sublimest, 
most  trenchant  note  of  all  Wisdom,  a  tremen- 
dous uprise  of  the  over-soul  in  man.  And  now  in 
turn,  here  in  this  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  Wisdom  is 
brought  to  confront  the  problem  of  immortality. 

242 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

The  doctrine  is  coming  into  the  popular  heart, 
very  Greek  and  aesthetic  and  self-pleasing;  so 
much  the  more  alluring  that  the  Jewish  nation 
to  whom  it  comes  has  had  such  a  hard  road  to 
traverse  in  the  present  world.  A  pleasing  outlet 
it  offers,  without  breaking  any  law  or  involving 
any  impiety.  Nor  does  Ecclesiastes  himself  set 
his  face  against  the  fact  of  immortality,  if  it  be 
a  fact.  He,  as  much  as  any  one,  would  accept 
it  if  the  way  to  it  were  clear.  Not  the  fact,  nor 
the  cheer  it  kindles,  but  the  motive  it  engenders, 
the  kind  of  life  that  this  speculative  immortality 
produces,  is  what  he  calls  into  court.  So  here 
it  is  the  part  of  Wisdom  to  make  a  flank  attack; 
to  come  round  under  the  self-pleasing  sentiment 
and  say  we  cannot  know;  and  further,  to  de- 
molish the  whole  notion  of  making  up  life  with 
reference  to  an  equivalent  of  something  else,  an 
extrinsic  reward.  This  it  does  just  as  honestly 
as  Job  issued  his  attack,  and  from  a  precisely 
analogous  motive.  Job  arraigned  his  hearsay 
God  in  the  interest  of  Godlikeness ;  Wisdom 
here,  likewise,  repudiates  this  shallow  immor- 
tality in  the  interest  of  the  true  immortality,  of 
eternity  in  the  heart.  The  thing  that  Greek  phi- 
losophy is  urging  on  the  age  is  exotic;  it  does 
not  root  back  to  the  old  Hebrew  principles  of 

243 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

righteousness,  has  not  the  fibre  of  character,  no 
real  grip  on  the  deeps  of  being.  That  is  why 
it  must  be  frowned  upon.  We  must  wait  until 
a  better  candidate  offers,  an  immortality  that 
means  more  than  self-indulgent  luxury;  must  in 
fact  grow  a  larger  manhood,  a  manhood  worthy 
of  eternal  perpetuation,  before  eternal  life  swims 
into  the  field  of  vision.  Meanwhile,  all  that  can 
be  said  is,  we  cannot  know.  Our  foresight  has 
reached  its  limit.  In  thus  stopping  short  at  ag- 
nosticism, Wisdom,  as  we  now  see,  was  soundly 
in  the  line  of  a  true  evolution;  for  we  have  the 
testimony  of  history  that  life  and  immortality 
were  not  fully  defined  in  Ecclesiastes'  day,  but 
were  first  brought  to  clear  light  in  a  later  era,  and 
by  an  agency  far  more  vital  than  speculation. 

This  agnosticism,  then,  is  the  verdict  of  a  twi- 
light period,  an  unfinal  dispensation;  pronounced 
when  as  yet  men's  insight  could  not  see  in  na- 
ture and  human  life  anything  beyond  its  range 
of  moral  and  cosmic  law,  anything  more  than  a 
self-returning,  stolidly  revolving  wheel  of  being; 
pronounced  when  as  yet  the  human  heart  felt  no 
surging  exuberance  of  life,  life  as  it  were  liber- 
ated to  excess,  toward  other  reaches  of  progress, 
toward  ranges  of  being  where  the  hunger  for 
reward  was  too  crude  to  enter.  What  other  ver- 

244 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

diet  could  a  pre-christian  Wisdom  give  ?  The 
onward  and  outward  surge,  the  pulsation  of  free 
spiritual  values,  was  not  yet;  all  that  could  yet  be 
felt  was  eternity  in  the  heart  working  dimly  and 
hidden  toward  some  state  of  life  unknown.  So 
all  that  could  be  done  was  to  wait,  and  rigidly  to 
test  present  values,  and  guide  life  by  the  friendly 
stars  until  the  day  break  and  the  shadows  flee 
away.  I  confess  there  is  to  me  a  note  of  the 
heroic  in  the  way  that  Wisdom,  in  the  interest  of 
something  more  solid  and  grounded,  thus  puts 
away  a  selfish  and  shallow  immortality;  like  a 
Cromwell  putting  away  the  crown,  like  a  Christ 
turning  back  from  the  glory  of  transfiguration 
and  starting  down  the  mountain  slope  toward 
Calvary.  Let  us  bow  our  heads  at  such  sublime 
self-abnegation. 

And  meanwhile  the  common-sense  road  that 
Wisdom  stakes  out  is  the  road  of  unbought,  un- 
buyable  character.  That  thing  reward,  as  wages, 
as  profit  accruing  to  labor  or  business,  is  vanity 
and  a  chase  after  wind;  but  the  life  itself,  the 
ultimate  fact,  vitalizing  and  ennobling  all  the  ener- 
gies, all  the  joys  and  endowments  of  the  soul,  is 
its  own  reward,  its  own  immortality,  its  own 
heaven.  We  have  here  but  the  homely  old  lesson, 
raised  to  a  higher  power,  of  the  things  that  are 

245 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

inalienably  ours,  as  woven  with  the  strings  of  our 
being,  set  over  against  the  things  that  however 
craved  and  valued  never  can  be  intrinsic.  It  re- 
calls Shakespeare's  words:  — 

"Who  steals  my  purse  steals  trash;   't  is  something,  nothing; 
'T  was  mine,  't  is  his,  and  has  been  slave  to  thousands; 
But  he  that  niches  from  me  my  good  name 
Robs  me  of  that  which  not  enriches  him 
And  makes  me  poor  indeed."  1 

The  purse  may  go,  but  there  is  still  the  good  name, 
better,  as  our  sage  says,  than  goodly  nard,  and  the 
character  it  connotes;  and  there  is  still  the  char- 
acter, though  the  name  itself  be  filched  away. 
And  there  is  work  to  do,  the  God-given  portion 
of  man,  a  work  cheered  by  wisdom  and  know- 
ledge and  joy;  inspiring  and  beautifying,  weav- 
ing the  materials  of  every-day  experience  into 
the  texture  of  a  self-rewarding  life.  And  as  for 
the  vision,  the  immortality  which  in  her  sense 
of  twilight  Wisdom  so  resolutely  put  away,  it 
"is  yet  for  an  appointed  time,  but  at  the  end  if 
shall  speak,  and  not  lie:  though  it  tarry,  wait 
for  it;  because  it  will  surely  come,  it  will  not 
tarry."  To  wait  for  the  real  vision  for  the  sake  of 
which  we  have  rejected  the  false,  and  meanwhile 
to  grow  a  manhood  worthy  to  receive  it:  this, 

1  Shakespeare,  Othello,  Act  iii,  sc.  iii. 
246 


THE  ATTACK  BY  FLANK 

I  believe,  sums  up  the  high  lesson  that  emerges 
from  the  puzzling  complexity  of  the  book  we  have 
studied  to-day. 

"Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 

Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past ! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea  !  "  * 

1  O.  W.  Holmes,  The  Chambered  Nautilut. 


VI 
THE   MAKING   OF   MANY   BOOKS 


PAUSE   FOR   STUDY   AND   DISSEMINATION 

I.  Significance  of  literature  as  Apocryphal. 
II.  The  question  of  relative  inspiration. 

III.  The  value  of  marking  time. 

IV.  The  two  apocryphal  Wisdom  books  described. 
V.  What  has  been  contributed  to  Wisdom , 


VI 

THE   MAKING   OF   MANY   BOOKS 

AND  for  what  is  more  than  these,  my 
son,  be  admonished:  of  making  many 
books  there  is  no  end;  and  much  study 
is  a  weariness  of  the  flesh."  1  This  singular  warn- 
ing occurs  at  the  close  of  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes; 
a  singular  warning,  I  say,  and  very  suggestive, 
when  we  consider  who  gives  it,  and  at  what  point 
of  relation  it  comes  in  the  large  development 
of  Wisdom  literature.  The  sage  Ecclesiastes  has 
been  in  vigorous  reaction  against  certain  tend- 
encies of  his  age;  his  whole  book  has  the  tone 
of  setting  wrong  ideals  right,  and  out  of  a  con- 
fused murmur  and  movement  of  discussion  get- 
ting at  the  real  inwardness  of  things.  "Though 
in  a  multitude  of  dreams  and  vanities  and  words 
many,"  he  says,  "yet  fear  thou  God."2  That 
this  dreamy  hum  of  words  around  him  was  the 
eager  exploitation  of  the  new  idea  of  immortality, 
as  it  came  to  act  on  the  popular  mind,  is  a  matter 
that  must  not  detain  us  here;  the  point  is,  that 
Ecclesiastes'  felt  business  was  to  condense  this 

1  Ecclesiastes  xii,  12.  *  Ecclesiastes  v,  7. 

251 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

vague  ferment  of  words  into  principle  and  sub- 
stance, once  for  all.  And  now  as  he  gets  to  the 
end  of  his  book,  he  feels  that  this  part  of  his 
work  is  done  to  stay.  There  will  yet  be  books 
written,  books  galore ;  such  an  intense  and  fer- 
vid movement  of  thought  cannot  help  so  agitat- 
ing the  air  as  to  precipitate  a  perfect  snow- 
storm of  written  leaves;  but  the  main  thing,  the 
nucleating  and  defining  truth,  has  been  said, 
and  all  that  can  be  said  after  it  is  as  it  were  the 
threshing  of  old  straw,  or,  if  this  is  too  dispar- 
aging a  simile,  at  best  the  following  out  of  the 
central  current  into  the  eddies  and  sluiceways 
of  detailed  application. 

This  is  no  necessary  reproach  on  the  "many 
books"  that  flow  on  without  end.  It  recog- 
nizes, in  fact,  the  event  that  has  to  follow  every 
great  epoch-making  achievement  of  fundamental 
thought.  The  abstruse  gravitation  theories  of 
Newton's  "  Principia,"  the  massive  involvements 
of  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species,"  have  to  be 
broken  up  and  simplified,  illustrated  and  so  to  say 
diluted,  through  many  a  humble  monograph  and 
text-book,  before  they  can  reach  that  grade  of 
information  which,  as  Macaulay  says,  "every 
schoolboy  knows."  We  do  not  get  our  notions 
of  evolution  directly  from  Darwin,  nor  our  notions 

252 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

of  gravitation  directly  from  Newton;  we  get 
them  from  some  of  the  many  obscure  books 
that  have  labored  to  give  them  currency;  or 
perhaps  still  more  from  the  allusions  and  phrases 
and  turns  of  expression  that  are  in  the  air,  and 
that  without  these  great  discoverers  could  not 
have  existed  at  all.  A  great  deal  of  knowledge 
is  by  such  means  infused  into  our  daily  speech; 
which  thus  becomes  the  most  potent  record  and 
vehicle  of  the  great  ideas  by  which  men  live. 

In  speaking  of  this  wholesale  making  of  books, 
Ecclesiastes  does  not  warn  his  readers  against 
studying  them.  If  they  want  to  lay  out  labor 
and  weariness  upon  them,  they  may  do  so.  He 
merely  warns  against  taking  these  books  as  original 
sources,  as  the  fountain-head  of  truth.  It  implies, 
indeed,  that  he  thought  no  small  things  of  his 
own  contribution  to  fundamental  truth;  but  in 
this,  I  think  we  are  in  position  to  say,  he  was 
quite  justified.  He  seemed  to  be  strongly  aware, 
by  some  inner  standard  of  his,  that  his  assess- 
ment of  things  had  reached  rock-bottom.  But 
what  his  warning  implies  most  deeply  of  all  is, 
that  we  should  have  a  sense  of  the  proportion 
and  relative  importance  of  things;  should  be 
aware  what  are  the  big,  elemental,  original  prin- 
ciples, and  what  are  merely  the  secondary  and 

253 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

derived.  There  is  a  road  from  each  to  each,  a 
circulation  of  power  both  venous  and  arterial ;  but 
to  lay  hold  first  of  the  central  heart  of  Wisdom, 
and  know  which  way  the  current  of  your  think- 
ing flows,  is  a  thing  so  important  that  when 
Wisdom  has  reached  a  certain  matured  and 
rounded  stage  men  must  needs  have  the  bound- 
aries marked  for  them,  and  "for  what  is  more 
than  these  be  admonished." 


Two  notable  samples,  remaining  to  us,  of  these 
"many  books"  we  are  to  take  up  for  considera- 
tion in  the  present  chapter.  They  are  found  in 
what  is  called  the  Apocrypha;  —  literally  the  hid- 
den books. 

Why  this  assemblage  of  books  was  originally 
so  called  is  not  clearly  known;  and  indeed  two 
opposite  reasons  may  be  adduced.  An  esoteric 
sect  may  hide  its  peculiar  doctrines  from  the  pub- 
lic, in  order  not  to  make  its  precious  secrets  com- 
mon. Or,  the  authorized  judges  and  censors  of 
books  may  hide  them  from  the  public  because 
they  contain  supposedly  something  dangerous 
or  heretical.  Neither  of  these  reasons  for  being 
apocryphal  is  suggested  by  the  internal  evidence 
of  the  books  we  are  to  consider:  the  Wisdom 

254 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

of  Jesus  Sirach,  or  Ecclesiasticus,  and  the  Wis- 
dom of  Solomon.  They  are  just  as  innocuous, 
just  as  frank  and  open,  as  any  scripture  book; 
and  to  say  that  they  are  genuine  books  of  Hebrew 
Wisdom  is  to  include  the  implication  that  they 
are  seeking  the  fullest  possible  currency,  not  the 
doubtful  honor  of  cryptic  or  esoteric  doctrine. 
Indeed,  there  would  be  much  more  reason,  on 
grounds  of  enigma  or  heresy,  for  turning  Ecclesi- 
astes  out  of  the  canon  than  either  of  them. 

A  third  reason  it  may  perhaps  be  invidious 
to  hint  at  all;  and  surely  it  ought  not  to  be 
asserted,  or  even  strongly  suggested.  When  I 
was  studying  in  Leipsic,  a  friend  of  mine,  much 
interested  in  German  social  and  political  move- 
ments, was  at  great  pains  to  get  hold  of  some  of 
the  incendiary  tracts  of  a  certain  socialist  faction, 
writings  which  the  government  had  rigorously 
suppressed,  and  which  the  faction  itself  cherished 
as  its  vital  power  and  rallying-cry.  My  friend, 
after  having  been  conducted  blindfold  to  an 
unknown  part  of  the  city  and  through  obscure 
lanes  and  passages  to  a  secret  room,  was  un- 
bandaged  and  bidden  help  himself  from  a  chest 
that  stood  there.  He  did  so;  took  the  tracts 
home  and  opened  them  with  great  anticipations; 
—  and  to  his  disappointment  found  them  so  com- 

255 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

monplace,  and  with  all  their  rant  so  deadly  dull, 
that  he  could  hardly  read  them  through.  Now  I 
would  not  for  a  moment  imply  that  these  apocry- 
phal books  are  stupid  or  unreadable.  There  is 
interest  and  beauty  enough  in  them  to  have  kept 
them  alive  all  these  centuries;  and  that,  when  we 
consider  how  many  books  die  before  they  com- 
plete their  first  year,  is  no  small  thing.  They  are 
not  without  an  eminent  degree  of  grace,  amenity, 
truth.  Nay,  so  very  true  are  they  sometimes  as 
to  have  become  truisms;  and  that  is  the  trouble; 
there  is  as  it  were  no  bite  to  them,  nothing  to  chal- 
lenge, nothing  to  be  roused  and  enlarged  by.  Job 
seemed  to  be  aware  of  this  quality  in  some  of 
the  Wisdom  utterances  when  he  exclaimed,  "Who 
knoweth  not  things  like  these  ?"  1  They  are  utter- 
ances that  seem  to  have  been  made  when  the 
stress,  the  uncertainties,  the  sense  of  gaining  new 
victories  against  error,  were  over,  and  all  that  men 
had  to  do  was  to  luxuriate  in  the  store  of  truth 
they  already  had  and  make  many  books.  Per- 
haps this  is  why  these  works  have  found  their 
level  among  the  hidden  books.  They  are  truth 
indeed,  but  tinged  with  the  over-obvious,  with 
truism.  If  our  Bible  is  a  people's  library,  ap- 
pealing to  the  universal  man's  vital  and  eternal 

1  For  this  exclamation,  with  its  occasion,  see  Job  xii,  3. 
256 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 
interests,  it  must  of  course  be  full  enough  to  round 
out  its  large  message;  but  some  directing  Wisdom 
has  taken  care  that  it  be  not  overstocked.  There 
has  been  a  strange  and  on  the  whole  accurate 
sifting  process,  from  which  has  been  retained  only 
the  finest  of  the  wheat.  If  a  book  has  remained 
in  the  Apocrypha,  we  may  pretty  surely  conclude 
it  is  because  it  ought  to  be  there.  It  may  not  be 
bad;  it  may  not  be  in  any  notable  degree  dull;  it 
may  even  supply  important  omissions,  or  clear  up 
knotty  problems;  but  of  these  two  apocryphal 
books  of  Wisdom,  at  least,  we  may  say,  as  was 
said  of  David's  worthies,  that  they  "attained  not 
to  the  first  three,"  the  mighty  men  who  brought 
water  from  the  well  of  Beth-lehem. 

Of  one  thing  more,  too,  we  may  be  as  sure  as  we 
are  of  an  overruling  Providence  who  is  no  respecter 
of  persons.  A  really  vital  truth,  essential  for  men 
to  live  by,  cannot  remain  hid,  cannot  be  monopo- 
lized by  any  esoteric  sect,  or  order,  or  guild.  It 
escapes  into  light  and  power;  it  will  tolerate  no 
bridle  or  suppression.  We  may  be  perfectly  sure 
the  truths  that  have  hands  and  feet,  that  are 
weapons  and  building-tools,  are  where  men  can 
get  at  them  and  they  can  get  at  men.  That  is 
why  the  contents  of  that  secret  chest,  so  jealously 
guarded,  so  extravagantly  valued,  turned  out  to  be 

257 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

so  insignificant:  the  large  issues  had  escaped,  and 
left  only  immaterial  ones.  That  is  why  we  may 
be  sure  we  are  discarding  no  essential  thing  if  we 
come  to  this  Apocrypha  with  abated  interest.  The 
vital  truths  of  life  are  already,  by  the  nature  of  the 
case,  in  the  open;  smiting  and  disturbing  in  fair 
battle,  or  if  soothing,  soothing  by  inspiring.  We 
do  not  come  to  these  hidden  books,  therefore,  for 
more  truth,  but  for  other  aspects  and  articulation 
of  what  we  already  have;  not  for  any  essential 
addition  to  our  Wisdom  structure,  but  for  some  de- 
tails in  the  furnishing  of  the  edifice  already  built. 

ii 

Before  we  enter  upon  the  specific  description 
of  them,  however,  a  certain  large  phase  of  Wisdom, 
to  which  their  relation  must  be  calculated,  falls 
here  to  be  considered. 

As  we  have  advanced  in  our  study  of  the  Wis- 
dom books,  "these  three  mightiest,"  the  feeling 
has  grown  upon  us,  I  am  sure,  that  behind  and 
underneath  them,  somehow,  there  was  a  vast 
spiritual  tide  bearing  them  on  to  rounded  fulness 
and  symmetry  of  truth;  that  this  body  of  Wisdom 
was  not  merely  man's  work,  dug  out  of  experience 
as  ore,  and  smelted  and  forged  and  wrought  into 
shape  by  mere  human  skill;  but  that  somehow 

258 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

beyond  the  shaping  of  man  a  larger  structure  was 
all  the  while  orbing  into  form,  as  it  were  emerging 
out  of  the  mysterious  creative  elements  of  the 
universe.  This  body  of  man's  Wisdom,  studi- 
ous, verified,  restrained  by  reason  though  it  was, 
was  man's  Wisdom  plus.  In  fact,  the  essential 
idea  of  it  seemed  equally  self-justifying,  whether 
we  viewed  the  growing  thing  from  the  obviously 
human  or  from  an  apprehended  divine  side.  It 
was  like  Abt  Vogler's  description,  in  Browning's 
poem,  of  the  marvellous  musical  creation  that  had 
risen  into  being,  beyond  his  power  to  limit  it,  as 
he  sat  improvising  at  his  organ :  — 

"For  higher  still  and  higher  .  .  . 
Up,  the  pinnacled  glory  reached,  and  the  pride  of  my  soul  was 

in  sight. 
In  sight?  Not  half  !  for  it  seemed,  it  was  certain,  to  match  man's 

birth, 

Nature  in  turn  conceived,  obeying  an  impulse  as  I; 
And  the  emulous  heaven  yearned  down,  made  effort  to  reach  the 

earth, 
As  the  earth  had  done  her  best,  in  my  passion,  to  scale  the  sky." 

So  he  exults  in  wonder  at  the  work  that  has  come 
into  being  through  this  mystic  double  agency,  and 
in  the  pride  of  his  own  art  thinks  that  it  is  only  of 
music  that  this  can  be  said :  — 

"For  think,  had  I  painted  the  whole, 
Why,  there  it  had  stood,  to  see,  nor  the  process  so  wonder- 
worth: 

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HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

Had  I  written  the  same,  made  verse  —  still,  effect  proceeds  from 
cause, 

Ye  know  why  the  forms  are  fair,  ye  hear  how  the  tale  is  told; 
It  is  all  triumphant  art,  but  art  in  obedience  to  laws, 

Painter  and  poet  are  proud,  in  the  artist-list  enrolled:  — 
But  here  is  the  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the  will  that  can, 

Existent  behind  all  laws,  that  made  them  and,  lo,  they  are  !  "  * 

Must  we  not  adopt  some  such  language  as  this, 
as  we  look  in  the  large  at  this  shaping  of  the  great 
truths  of  Wisdom  out  of  the  discord  and  turmoil 
of  the  centuries,  and  see  what  they  come  to,  in 
their  self-proving  ideals  of  sanity,  integrity,  char- 
acter ?  We  need  not  assume  that  our  own  pecul- 
iar art  alone  has  a  mystic  source,  or  that  we  can 
trace  our  neighbor's  art  to  more  calculable  laws 
than  govern  ours.  Can  we  not  put  the  Hebrew 
sages,  Koheleth  and  the  author  of  Job  and  the 
Proverb  writers,  by  the  side  of  Abt  Vogler,  and 
for  their  work  too,  as  well  as  for  music,  claim  "  a 
flash  of  the  will  that  can"  ?  It  is  as  if,  when  look- 
ing through  the  vista  of  their  own  intellect  and 
getting,  in  the  vision  of  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  a  sense 
of  "a  certain  divine  intellectual  companionship 
with  Deity,"  they  saw  no  mere  poetic  figment  but 
an  actual  matter-of-fact  entity,  whose  reality  was 
evidenced  in  its  solid  effects. 

I  am  trying,  it  will  be  noted,  to  describe,  how- 

1  Browning,  "  Abt  Vogler,"  in  Dramatis  Persona. 
260 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

ever  lamely,  a  very  occult,  marvellous  thing.  Per- 
haps it  were  better  left  untouched;  but  it  is  by  some 
such  way  as  this  suggests  that  I  am  best  able  to 
image  to  myself  a  thing  that  here  comes  in  sight ; 
namely,  what  we  call  inspiration.  Here,  working 
with  men's  earthly  insights  and  earthly  craftsman- 
ship, is  a  power  which  to  every  sincere  mind  is 
an  authentic  reality,  yet  which  no  man  can  define. 
Inspiration  —  it  is  almost  pitiable  to  note  the  petti- 
ness that  has  beset  men's  attempts  to  get  it  into 
realizable  limits.  They  have  so  inveterately  tried 
to  steal  behind  the  scenes  and  peddle  out  God's 
share  of  it,  instead  of  trying  to  enrich  their  own; 
have  weighed  it  in  ounces  and  pennyweights,  and 
proportioned  it  carefully  between  Isaiah  and  Es- 
ther and  the  imprecatory  Psalms;  have  vaguely 
tried  to  postulate  a  sort  of  spiritual  trance-medium- 
ship,  varying  all  the  way  from  ecstasy  to  automatic 
writing.  Very  little,  it  seems  to  me,  can  come  from 
such  a  paltry  process  of  interpretation.  Nor  am  I 
claiming  here  to  contribute  a  solution.  Enough, 
perhaps,  if  I  may  put  in  the  place  of  these  a  view 
more  fruitful  of  suggestion  because  larger.  Our 
contemplation  of  Wisdom  in  literary  light  may 
help  us  to  some  more  luminous  aspects  of  the  mat- 
ter. We  have  seen  how,  when  men  wreaked  their 
soul's  powers  on  life  and  experience,  drawing  there- 

261 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

out  light  and  counsel,  they  not  only  led  men  but 
mysteriously  were  led;  they  builded  better  than 
they  knew;  a  Power  seemed  working  with  them  to 
make  their  thought  sane  and  permanent.  It  was 
a  Power  such  as  every  poet  and  artist  feels  as 
soon  as  he  reaches  the  absolute  centre  of  his  art; 
and  yet,  from  the  fact  that  its  product  rounded 
into  a  finished  Bible,  it  must  have  been  in  some 
sense  unique.  What  now,  in  the  light  of  to-day, 
can  we  make  of  this  ? 

Every  student  of  literature  and  history  is  familiar 
with  the  workings  of  what  is  called  the  Zeitgeist, 
the  spirit  of  the  time.  We  all  feel  something  of  it 
now,  as  soon  as  we  stop  to  think,  and  as  soon  as 
we  compare  the  sentiments  that  move  us  now  with 
the  sentiments  in  control  a  generation  ago.  We  feel 
how  inevitably  we  are  in  the  power  of  it  when,  for 
instance,  we  take  up  an  old  author,  like  Dante 
or  Chaucer,  and  try  to  think  ourselves  into  his 
inner  world,  or  as  we  say,  get  into  his  spirit.  He 
moved  in  an  atmosphere  of  thoughts  and  senti- 
ments very  vital  and  real  to  him,  very  different 
from  ours,  and  to  us  perhaps  seeming  wholly  dead 
issues.  The  spirit  of  the  time  has  become  other; 
is  always  shifting  and  changing;  it  decrees  that  an 
author,  whenever  he  lives,  shall  write  thus  and  not 
otherwise.  To  respond  to  any  literature  truly  we 

262 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 
must,  so  to  say,  translate  its  spirit  into  our  idiom, 
must  identify  what  is  of  keenest  interest  to  us  with 
what  in  it  is  disguised  in  a  foreign  color  and  dress. 
Every  age,  ours  with  the  rest,  has  its  own  sources 
of  inspiration,  closely  enmeshed  with  its  history; 
its  suffusion  point  where  its  ideas  are  clearest,  its 
emotions  keenest,  its  sentiments  most  influential, 
its  motives  most  potent.  It  was  so  in  Ecclesias- 
tes*  time;  and  in  Job's.  They  were  dealing  with 
immediate  issues,  with  a  spirit  and  sentiment  of 
the  time. 

But  in  each  of  these  ages,  the  age  of  Ecclesiastes 
and  the  age  of  the  author  of  Job,  we  have  seen  an 
element  enter  which  was  not  of  an  age,  not  of  a 
nation,  and  we  may  squarely  say  not  of  earth;  an 
element  which,  as  soon  as  we  disengage  it  from  its 
old-time  setting,  lays  as  powerful  hold  on  us,  two 
millenniums  later,  as  it  did  on  the  heart  of  man 
then.  This  element  rose  out  of  its  time  and  was 
fitted  to  it;  yet  also  in  a  larger  sense  it  was  in  its 
day  a  misfit;  nay,  we  may  say,  was  bound  to  be 
a  misfit  until  the  better  heart  of  man  caught  up 
with  it  and  was  adjusted  to  it.  It  rose  out  of  a 
nation,  with  its  peculiar  preparation  and  history; 
and  yet  in  a  larger  sense  belongs  not  to  that  but  to 
every  nation.  It  owns  no  subservience  to  period  or 
nation;  that  is  why  the  utterances  produced  by 

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HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

the  pulsation  of  this  spirit  are  not  mere  literature 
but  archetypal  literature  —  a  Bible.  It  is  as  if,  in 
every  temporary  history  or  vogue,  truth  absolute 
were  struggling  to  the  birth. 

We  have  seen  how  such  a  pulsation  wrought  to 
bring  a  more  humane  and  more  Godlike  order: 
how  in  the  time  of  Job,  when  Wisdom  was  hard- 
ening into  calculation  and  dogma,  it  delivered  a 
vital  central  attack  and  turned  the  heart  of  man  to 
his  intrinsic  integrity  and  life;  how  in  the  time  of 
Ecclesiastes,  when  Wisdom  was  tempted  by  the  soft 
and  self-pleasing  dreams  of  a  future  state,  it  came 
round  in  a  flank  attack  and  made  men  revise 
their  notions  of  reward  and  character.  Thus  a 
higher  warning  of  Wisdom  came  in  always  to 
announce  when  the  lower  was  outworn,  and  when 
the  ideal  must  become  more  inner  and  spiritual. 
And  in  each  case  it  seemed  to  be  pointing  to  a 
larger  fulness  and  finish  farther  on;  working  out, 
as  it  were,  a  mighty  drama  and  theme,  which 
would  come  to  clear  light  in  some  state  of  things 
yet  unknown. 

Where  did  this  higher  pulsation,  this  saving  cor- 
rective, come  from  ?  Not  all  from  the  pseudony- 
mous author  Koheleth,  nor  from  the  anonymous 
writer  of  Job.  These  men  were  but  its  mouth- 
pieces, yet  their  own  masters  too,  and  great 

264 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

through  its  greatness.  What  was  this  spirit,  time- 
less and  world-embracing,  which  thus  came  to  a 
focus  where  the  age's  need  was  the  sorest,  and 
solved  its  problem  in  terms  of  its  own  purer  will  ? 
It  was  the  mighty  spirit  of  manhood,  surging 
onward  toward  its  maturity  and  adult  fulness; 
this  indeed  and  most  truly;  but  also  —  why  delay 
to  name  it  ?  —  the  Spirit  of  God,  coming  to  this 
little  planet  from  the  unseen  and  eternal,  coming 
as  to  a  life-giving  tryst.  And  the  making  that 
spirit  prevail,  in  human  insight  and  conviction 
and  utterance  —  this  is  inspiration. 

The  point  of  cardinal  interest  in  all  our  study  of 
this  literature  of  Wisdom  is,  as  I  have  repeatedly 
intimated,  the  fact  that  this  inspiration  does  not 
confine  its  favoring  visits  to  the  duly  legitimated 
priests  and  prophets;  it  is  superinduced  also,  in 
undeniable  largeness  and  genuineness,  on  that 
unforced  and  exploring  spirit  of  man  which,  in  the 
free  search  for  wisdom,  delved  as  it  were  scien- 
tifically into  the  common  values  of  life.  Thus 
this  third  great  strand  of  truth,  the  strand  of 
reverent  reason,  has  demonstrated  its  authenticity 
and  divineness,  as  woven  in  with  the  rest.  In 
equal  degree  with  oracle  and  vision  we  get  from 
it  the  sense  of  something  hewn  out  of  the  mys- 
tery of  things,  rounded,  finished,  evidently  right. 

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HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

Another  thing  we  seem  to  recognize,  too,  when 
the  relations  of  Wisdom  appear  as  I  have  traced 
them.  Ecclesiastes'  final  clearing  of  the  issue 
gives  the  impression  of  having  closed  the  case. 
After  his  uncompromising  solution,  his  massive 
blocking  out  of  the  completed  Wisdom  structure, 
we  feel  as  if  Wisdom  had  run  its  cycle  on  the 
present  scale  and  returned  to  its  starting-point, 
had  fairly  revealed  the  sum  of  manhood;  and 
henceforth  there  is  only  the  making  of  many 
books,  the  relegation  of  these  great  Wisdom  prin- 
ciples to  that  study  which,  though  a  delight  and 
appeasement,  is  also  a  weariness  of  the  flesh.  We 
know  too,  now  that  the  structure  is  before  us  in 
rounded  contour,  we  know  by  a  divine  power  of 
recognition  within  us,  that  such  a  symmetry  of 
truth,  such  gradual  moulding  of  it  through  cen- 
turies into  self-consistent  fulness,  could  not  have 
come  from  man  alone;  it  came  also,  as  it  were 
the  response  of  deeper  nature  to  her  reverent 
inquirer  from  the  unseen  places  where  the  Crea- 
tor-Spirit is  evermore  at  work  evolving  a  divine- 
human  manhood. 

Hi 

But  we  have  left  our  apocryphal  books  of  Wis- 
dom long  waiting  while  we  turned  aside  to  pursue 

266 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

these  high  themes.  Returning  to  them  now,  we 
ask,  What  is  their  relation  to  all  this  ?  Have 
we  adduced  these  considerations  of  an  inspiring 
guidance  in  order,  coming  back  to  these  books, 
to  deny  them  inspiration  ?  No :  not  at  all.  We  are 
not  concerned  to  weigh  and  parcel  out  divine 
influences  here,  or  to  say  how  much  we  ought  to 
accept,  how  much  reject.  It  is  not  theological 
councils  and  courts,  nor  chairs  of  literature,  that 
settle  such  things;  the  verdict,  if  it  settles  the  case 
at  all,  is  within  us.  Wisdom  itself  has  proved  this. 
How,  then,  shall  we  evaluate  them  ? 

Well,  this  is  how  it  impresses  me.  We  have  seen 
the  greater  books,  the  rough-hewn  issue  as  it  were, 
advancing  into  ordered  form,  marching  onward 
step  by  step,  each  to  its  appointed  landing-stage ; 
until  at  length  the  feeling  arose,  Here  we  stand, 
our  cycle  finished,  the  rest  is  but  book-making. 
It  was  a  sublime  forward  march  and  campaign 
of  Wisdom.  And  now,  as  we  set  beside  those 
books  these  others,  the  impression  we  get  is,  as  it 
were,  the  impression  of  marking  time.  Wisdom 
has  halted  in  her  tracks,  but  still  keeps  up  her 
motion;  her  energies  still  all  there  and  ready  for 
the  next  word  of  advance.  These  books  do  not  get 
us  forward,  in  any  essential  degree,  in  new  dis- 
covery; but  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  not  vacu- 

267 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

ous  and  trifling,  or  retrogressive.  They  simply 
tread  loyally  and  steadily  in  the  good  old  paths,  of 
law  and  common  sense  and  sound  character;  keep- 
ing up  useful  exercise,  and  hardening  the  spiritual 
muscles  to  endurance  and  reliability. 

There  is  no  little  avail  in  marking  time.  When 
I  lived  in  Germany  and  used  to  observe  the  re- 
cruits in  the  barracks  going  through  their  ever- 
lasting drill,  their  angular  puppet-like  motions, 
and  their  absurd  goose-step,  it  sometimes  seemed 
to  me  unnecessarily  laborious  and  severe.  But 
when  afterward  I  observed  how  out  of  the  lum- 
bering, awkward  demeanor  of  a  back-country 
yokel  there  gradually  emerged  grace  of  movement 
and  a  manly,  erect  carriage,  I  revised  my  opinion. 
The  goose-step  had  demonstrated  its  usefulness. 
It  did  not  produce  everything,  nor  the  highest 
thing,  but  it  had  its  defensible  office  in  the  making 
of  a  soldier.  There  may  be,  in  the  world's  dis- 
cipline also,  good  and  needed  results  from  an  era 
of  marking  time.  When  an  age  has  been  fed  on 
rich  and  concentrated  ideas,  time  must  be  given 
for  these  to  be  chewed  and  digested  and  assimi- 
lated, and  so  worked  naturally  into  the  spiritual 
tissues  of  men.  An  age  cannot  bear  many  origina- 
tive thinkers,  many  strikers-out  of  new  movements, 
at  once.  They  would  generate  ideas  too  fast  to  be 

268 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

taken  care  of.  Hence  the  seeming  fallow  periods 
in  progress  and  literary  genius.  It  is  provided  for 
in  the  unseen  places  that  the  Koheleths  and  the 
Luthers  and  the  Newtons  and  the  Darwins  be 
sufficiently  rare.  The  ferment  of  thought  and 
action  that  they  initiate  must  be  naturalized  and 
tempered,  must  settle  into  the  equable  currents  of 
living,  where  it  mixes  with  the  common  function 
of  existence. 

And  meanwhile  there  is  the  great  rank  and  file, 
the  unwieldy  body  of  men  who  take  ideas  slowly, 
who  subsist  on  derived  and  diluted  thought,  and 
who  for  spiritual  erectness  of  movement  must  be 
patiently  drilled  in  the  goose-step.  It  takes  most 
of  the  world's  time,  and  most  of  its  outlay  of  edu- 
cative effort,  to  care  for  these.  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
uncomplimentary,  but  really  I  am  not  sure  but 
some  of  us,  or  at  least  some  whom  we  know, 
belong  to  this  category.  And  indeed  the  life  that 
we  all  live,  we  who  are  clever  and  originative,  as 
well  as  the  stupid  and  stolid,  is  predominantly 
commonplace;  it  lies  along  the  flats  and  levels 
of  existence,  and  its  work  is  mostly  routine.  To 
very  few  of  us  is  it  given,  and  then  only  in  rare 
moments,  to  mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles;  more 
of  us,  perhaps,  can  run  and  not  be  weary,  though 
running  is  not  our  common  gait;  but  all  of  us, 

269 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

every  day,  have  need  of  that  very  lowly  and  use- 
ful ability,  to  walk  and  not  faint.  Yes :  there  is  a 
good  word  to  be  said  for  marking  time;  none  of 
us  but  can  march  the  better  for  having  known  the 
dull  but  seasoning  discipline  of  it. 

IV 

It  is  with  this  thought  of  their  homely  educative 
value  in  mind  that  we  now  approach  more  specifi- 
cally these  two  specimens  of  the  book-making  that 
Ecclesiastes  recognized  in  his  Wisdom  world. 

As  we  look  at  them,  and  attempt  to  locate  their 
tone  and  thought,  we  become  aware,  as  Dean 
Stanley  has  pointed  out,  that  Jewish  Wisdom  no 
longer  radiates  from  a  single  centre.  Its  standard- 
setting  sage  can  no  longer,  like  Ecclesiastes, 
assume  to  be  "king  over  Israel  in  Jerusalem." 
It  has  come  to  have  two  centres,  Jerusalem  and 
Alexandria,  the  centre  where  the  temple  and  the 
home  people  are,  and  the  centre  where  the  Jews 
of  the  dispersion  come  in  contact  with  the  cosmo- 
politan sentiments  and  standards  of  the  great 
world.  Between  these  two,  one  figures  that  there 
was  constantly  going  on  a  process  like  what  we 
used  to  learn  about  in  physics,  when  we  stud- 
ied how  liquids  of  different  density  pass  outward 
and  inward  through  a  porous  partition,  and  grad- 

270 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

ually  mingle  together.  There  was  an  exosmosis 
and  endosmosis  of  elements,  by  which  the  Jewish 
became  more  gracious  and  cosmopolitan,  and  the 
Greek  took  on  more  solidity  and  stamina.  Thus 
these  two  books,  so  far  as  they  go,  are  landmarks 
of  movement  toward  a  period  when,  in  Wisdom 
culture,  there  would  be  no  more  Jew  nor  Greek 
to  separate  the  minds  that  were  looking  at  funda- 
mental things;  but  rather  a  common  suffusion 
and  idiom,  in  which  men,  whether  in  Jerusalem  or 
Alexandria,  Rome  or  Wittenberg,  could  see  eye 
to  eye.  Only,  we  will  remember  that  the  denser 
liquid,  the  Hebrew  Wisdom  which  set  the  domi- 
nating type  of  it  all,  was  identified  with  Jerusa- 
lem; for  as  our  Lord  Himself  said,  salvation  is 
of  the  Jews.  But  Hebrew  Wisdom,  so  staunchly 
based,  can  afford  to  be  liberal;  can  reach  out  and 
gather  wealth  from  minds  that  have  brought  other 
thoughts  and  other  customs  to  bear  upon  life. 
This  is  what,  as  Dean  Stanley  thinks,  these  apo- 
cryphal Wisdom  books  do.  "The  one,"  he  says, 
"is  the  recommendation  of  the  theology  of  Pales- 
tine to  Alexandria  —  'the  Wisdom  of  the  Son  of 
Sirach;'  the  other  is  the  recommendation  of  the 
theology  of  Alexandria  to  Palestine  -  -'the  Wis- 
dom of  Solomon. '  " '  For  theology  here  let  us  sub- 

1  Stanley,  Jewish  Church,  vol.  iii,  p.  296. 
271 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

stitute  Wisdom;  for  these  books  are  essentially 
in  the  Wisdom  strain. 

I.  The  Wisdom  of  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Sirach, 
otherwise  called  Ecclesiasticus,  or  the  "Church 
Book,"  which  was  originally  written  in  Hebrew, 
has  been  very  recently  the  centre  of  unusual  in- 
terest to  the  scholarly  world,  from  the  fact  that 
the  Hebrew  original,  long  lost,  has  been  less  than 
ten  years  discovered.  We  get  our  English  version 
at  second  hand,  from  a  translation  made  into 
Greek  by  his  grandson,  and  dated  in  the  eight  and 
thirtieth  year  of  King  Ptolemy  Euergetes,  that  is, 
one  hundred  and  thirty-two  years  before  Christ. 
His  grandfather's  Hebrew  original,  then,  comes 
perhaps  from  the  first  quarter  of  that  century,  and 
so  not  many  years  after  the  writing  of  Ecclesiastes. 
It  is  a  long  book,  fifty-one  chapters,  the  longest 
scripture  book,  it  is  said,  written  by  one  author. 

When  authors  write  long  books,  they  either 
have  a  great  deal  to  say,  or  a  great  deal  of  leisure 
to  say  it  in.  The  whole  tone  of  the  book  supports 
the  impression  of  this  second  alternative.  It  an- 
swers well  to  the  conception  of  a  loyal,  thoughtful 
Jew,  well  read  in  his  nation's  lore;  a  man  of  lei- 
sure and  quiet  study,  traversing  with  a  tranquil 
delight  the  rich  field  of  Jewish  literature,  and  seek- 
ing to  make  this  acceptable  to  a  world  larger  than 

272 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

Palestine.  Especially  so  as  this  Jewish  literature 
takes  the  form  and  atmosphere  of  Wisdom,  that  is, 
a  broad  and  unliturgic  application  of  ideas  to  life, 
as  it  were  a  gracious  philosophy  of  conduct.  It  is 
as  if  this  Jew  would  proudly  show  the  Greeks  that 
the  Hebrews  too  had  a  philosophy  which  in  its 
way  could  compete  with  theirs,  and  which  need  not 
apologize  either  for  crudeness  of  style,  or  poverty 
of  content.  But  he  does  not  attempt,  like  the  au- 
thor of  Job,  to  strike  out  new  and  bold  paths,  or 
to  startle  men,  as  did  Ecclesiastes,  into  a  reactive 
or  corrective  way  of  thinking.  He  stands  in  the 
good  old  ways,  accepting  all  of  them;  is  in  fact 
concerned  with  the  law  of  Moses,  and  with  the 
sound  and  seasoned  historic  past,  rather  than  with 
any  future  which,  though  promising,  is  yet  untried. 
He  is  confessedly  a  book-maker,  who  has  drawn 
his  impulses  not  so  directly  from  life  as  from  other 
books.  This  fact  is  at  the  outset  recognized  by 
the  grandson  who  translates  him;  who  in  his  pre- 
face thus  describes  his  procedure  and  object: 
"  My  grandfather  Jesus,  having  much  given  him- 
self to  the  reading  of  the  law,  and  the  prophets, 
and  the  other  books  of  our  fathers,  and  having 
gained  great  familiarity  therein,  was  drawn  on 
also  himself  to  write  somewhat  pertaining  to 
instruction  and  wisdom;  in  order  that  those  who 

273 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

love  learning,  and  are  addicted  to  these  things, 
might  make  progress  much  more  by  living  accord- 
ing to  the  law."  1 

As  this  preface  would  indicate,  the  book  was 
written  just  at  the  time  when  the  Hebrew  nation, 
having  through  their  scribes  and  rabbis  become 
aware  what  a  glorious  past  was  theirs,  and  what 
a  literary  heritage  they  had,  were  becoming,  as 
other  nations  called  them,  "the  people  of  a  book;" 
and  this  author,  it  would  seem,  was  coming  to  look 
upon  the  literature  he  studied  not  merely  as  many 
books  but  as  one  book,  one  canon.  "The  law, 
and  the  prophets,  and  the  other  books,"  —  this 
phrasing  names  the  same  threefold  division  used 
afterward  to  characterize  the  make-up  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  D^insi  n^aa  rmn:  the  same  that 
our  Lord  Himself  used,  only  He  called  the  third 
division  "the  Psalms,"  after  the  name  of  the  first 
book  in  it.  So  Jesus  the  son  of  Sirach  writes,  with 
the  radiance  of  the  canonical  Hebrew  Bible  shining 
behind  him,  with  keen  literary  appreciation  of  its 
beauty  and  truth;  and  yet  with  the  fervor  not  of  a 
reformer,  like  Ecclesiastes  and  the  author  of  Job, 
nor  yet  of  an  ardent  and  impassioned  missionary, 
like  the  second  Isaiah;  rather  of  a  bookman  and 
dilettant,  who  sits  cosily  in  his  library  far  from  the 

1  Ecclesiasticus,  Prologue. 
274 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

noise  of  the  world,  and  in  his  refined  tastes  is  in- 
clined to  despise  the  common  man  "whose  talk," 
as  he  says,  "is  of  bullocks."  So  his  book,  as  com- 
pared to  the  original  scripture,  is  a  mild,  reflected 
radiance,  like  moonlight  to  sunlight;  it  does  not 
seem,  in  the  passion  of  a  vital  issue,  so  to  get  down 
to  close  grips  with  the  inner  heart-throbs  of  men. 
The  character  of  the  mashal,  or  aphorism  form, 
prevailing  in  the  book,  answers  also  to  this  book- 
ish, as  it  were  academic  character.  We  saw  how 
Wisdom  began  with  the  pithy  condensed  couplet, 
which  got  all  its  lesson  into  closest  words  of  an- 
tithesis or  briefest  suggestion  of  simile  and  meta- 
phor; and  how  it  went  on  from  this  to  a  longer 
mashal,  or  to  a  chain  of  story  or  description  or  ar- 
gument, yet  keeping  the  individual  couplet  which 
was  its  unit  still  full  of  vim  and  spirit.  Here  in 
Ecclesiasticus,  for  the  most  part,  the  mashal  has 
become  a  kind  of  short  essay,  wherein  several 
aspects  of  the  thought  are  given,  or  wherein  the 
imagery  is  not  entirely  illustrative  but  revelled  in, 
so  to  say,  for  'its  own  sake.  In  sum  we  may  say, 
the  mashal  is  in  complete  running  order,  grace- 
ful, finished,  smoothly  constructed,— with  the  fire 
taken  out,  the  edge  a  little  blunted.  The  grandson 
fears  that  this  loss  of  effect  may  be  owing  to  the 
fact  that  this  is  a  translation  instead  of  an  original; 

275 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

"for,"  he  says,  "things  originally  spoken  in  He- 
brew have  not  the  same  force  in  them  when  they 
are  translated  into  another  tongue."  It  is  true  we 
have  not  the  same  rugged,  meaty  idiom  back  of 
our  version  that  we  had  in  the  case  of  the  other 
books;  but  this  does  not  fully  account  for  the  mat- 
ter. We  can  still  discern  the  spirit  of  the  man, 
and  the  pasturing-ground  of  his  thinking:  a  sweet 
and  gentle  amateur  spirit,  so  to  say,  ranging  in  a 
region  of  derived  and  reflected  ideas;  but  some- 
how Wisdom,  as  embodied  in  his  words,  seems  to 
have  lost  its  cutting  edge.  It  does  not  smite  men 
and  bring  them  up  standing,  nor  rouse  the  interest 
of  those  who  have  not  already  discovered  it;  but 
addressing  itself,  as  the  preface  says,  to  those  who 
"are  addicted  to  these  things,"  it  sweetly  soothes 
and  charms  them.  One  is  reminded  of  Abraham 
Lincoln's  quaint,  non-committal,  "If  a  person 
likes  that  sort  of  thing,  why,  it  is  just  the  sort  of 
thing  he  likes."  It  would  be  unjust  to  Jesus  Sirach 
to  compare  him  with  Martin  Farquhar  Tupper, 
that  very  minor  poet  who  by  his  "Proverbial 
Philosophy"  had  such  astonishing  popularity  half 
a  century  ago;  for  Tupper' s  work  is  hopelessly 
dead,  while  Jesus  Sirach's  is  in  a  limbo  of  the 
Elysium  beyond  death;  but  the  two  leave  a  similar 
impression,  Tupper  in  greater  degree,  of  a  certain 

276 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

lack  of  fire,  of  probing  thrust,  of  grip  on  the  ele- 
mental things. 

Yet  there  are  fine  passages  in  the  book,  and 
well-wrought  literary  workmanship.  The  whole 
book  is  richly  worth  perusing  and  companying  with; 
we  remember  how  in  Adam  Bede's  Sunday  morn- 
ing reading  "the  son  of  Sirach's  keen-edged  words 
would  bring  a  delighted  smile"  in  spite  of  his 
sense  that  they  were  not  inspired.  The  book  be- 
gins, after  the  conventional  tradition,  with  a  praise 
of  Wisdom,  a  kind  of  ode;  and  farther  on  Wis- 
dom speaks  in  praise  of  herself,  after  the  manner 
of  the  early  part  of  Proverbs.  We  may  perhaps, 
without  disparagement,  say  it  is  Proverbs  and 
water.  There  are  some  new  applications  of  Wis- 
dom to  life :  on  Adaptation  of  Behavior  to  various 
sorts  of  men;  on  Meddlesomeness;  on  Choice  of 
Company;  on  Niggardliness;  on  Free  Will;  on 
Graciousness ;  on  Women  Bad  and  Good ;  on 
Reasoning;  on  Health;  on  Disease  and  Physicians; 
on  the  Wisdom  of  Business  and  the  Wisdom  of 
Leisure;  on  Friendship.  I  use  Professor  Moulton's 
headings;  his  edition  of  the  book,  in  the  Modern 
Reader's  Bible,  is  especially  good.  The  most  nota- 
ble parts  of  the  book,  perhaps,  are  toward  the 
end;  where  there  occurs  a  noble  Hymn  of  Praise 
on  the  W7orks  of  Creation;  and  following  that  a 

277 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

really  unique  and  original  kind  of  scripture,  a 
Praise  of  Famous  Men.  "  Let  us  now  praise  famous 
men,"  the  author  begins,  "and  our  fathers  that 
begat  us;  "  and  from  righteous  Enoch,  away  back 
in  the  patriarchal  age,  down  to  Simon  the  son  of 
Onias,  his  own  contemporary  probably,  —  more 
than  a  score  in  all,  as  well  as  classes  of  men, — 
he  deploys  before  us  a  noble  roll-call  of  the  wor- 
thies of  Israel.  It  is  a  forerunner,  perhaps  a  sug- 
gestion, of  the  much-esteemed  eleventh  chapter 
of  Hebrews. 

Of  passages  or  inspirations  from  this  Book  of 
Ecclesiasticus,  modern  literature  and  music  have 
availed  themselves  quite  liberally.  John  Bunyan's 
stormy  religious  nature  once  received  great  com- 
fort, without  knowing  the  source,  from  the  verse, 
"Look  at  the  generations  of  old  and  see;  did  any 
ever  trust  in  the  Lord  and  was  confounded?" 
Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  it  is  said,  caught  from 
Ecclesiasticus  a  certain  inwardness  of  meditative 
spirit  and  applied  it  to  a  Christian  theme,  in  the 
Latin  hymn,  "  Jesu  dulcis  memoria,"  translated 
into  our  familiar  hymns,  "  Jesus,  the  very  thought 
is  sweet,"  and  "  Jesus,  the  very  thought  of  Thee, 
with  sweetness  fills  the  breast."  So  too  it  is  said 
the  German  choral,  "Nun  danket  alle  Gott," 
"Now  thank  we  all  our  God,  with  heart,  and 

278 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

hands,  and  voices,"  was  taken  from  suggestions  of 
this  book.  And  some  of  us  may  recall  that  the 
composer  Brahms,  in  his  last  composition,  the 
"four  earnest  songs  for  bass,"  set  the  third  song 
to  those  piercing  words  of  Ecclesiasticus :  — 

"  O  Death, 
How  bitter  art  thou 
Unto  him  that  dwelleth  in  peace, 
To  him  that  hath  joy  in  his  possessions, 
And  liveth  free  from  trouble; 
To  him  whose  ways  are  prosperous  in  all  things, 
To  him  that  still  may  eat ! 

"  O  Death, 
How  welcome  thy  call 

To  him  that  is  in  want,  and  whose  strength  doth  fail  him, 
And  whose  life  is  but  a  pain, 
Who  hath  nothing  to  hope  for, 
And  cannot  look  for  relief  !"  * 

So  it  has  fared  with  the  book :  passages,  strains, 
reverberations  of  it  have  sounded  deep  in  the  heart 
of  the  meditative  through  all  the  centuries;  it  is  a 
much  loved  book. 

2.  With  the  book  entitled  The  Wisdom  of  Solo- 
mon our  review  of  the  pre-Christian  body  of  Wis- 
dom comes  to  a  close:  this  last,  like  the  first  in 
the  series,  and  something  like  eight  and  a  half 
centuries  after  the  death  of  Solomon,  still  binding 
itself  in  the  same  bundle  of  writings  by  taking  the 

1  Ecclesiasticus  xli,  i,  2. 
2/9 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

name  of  the  large-hearted  son  of  David.  This 
book,  it  appears,  was  written  by  an  Alexandrian 
Jew,  perhaps  in  the  neighborhood  of  a  century 
before  Christ,  with  one  main  object  of  infusing 
into  the  Jewish  mind  some  of  the  amenities  of  the 
Greek  way  of  thinking;  and  with  another,  one 
feels  sure,  of  recording  the  writer's  reaction  and 
disgust,  the  reaction  of  a  more  deep-seeing  nature, 
against  the  splendid  idolatries  with  which  there 
in  Egypt  he  was  surrounded.  It  is  as  if  in  the  very 
dialect  and  philosophical  idiom  of  heathenism  he 
would  restate  and  confute  its  ideas  of  the  world : 
for  here  again  the  denser  fluid,  the  dominating 
spirit,  is  from  Jerusalem,  salvation  is  of  the  Jews. 
So  there  is  about  the  book,  in  the  first  place, 
a  greater  inwardness  of  interpretation  than  we 
have  before  been  impressed  with.  God  is  still 
there,  and  nature,  and  the  wonders  of  miracle  and 
history,  as  the  Hebrew  writings  set  them  forth; 
but  somehow  the  soul  of  man,  his  psychological 
powers  and  tendencies,  are  intimately  involved 
with  these  and  active;  as  if  the  manhood  soul 
were  no  longer  set  over  against  nature,  to  receive 
beyond  his  will  nature's  blessings  and  disasters, 
but  were  rather  a  part  of  the  law  of  nature,  work- 
ing from  his  own  motion.  This,  as  we  see,  is  a 
quasi-scientific  way  of  looking  at  the  world.  It  has 

280 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

in  the  Greek  attitude  and  tone  of  thinking  been  set 
in  the  way  of  evolving  a  cosmic,  as  distinguished 
from  a  national  philosophy. 

But  in  the  second  place,  the  book  is  conscious 
that  while  the  Greek  approach  to  things  is  deli- 
cate and  true,  its  underlying  principle,  its  hid- 
den starting-point,  is  rotten  and  false.  It  is  built 
on  that  idolatrous  heathenism  which  degraded 
man's  ideals  by  associating  them  with  wood  and 
stone,  with  beasts  and  the  lower  operations  of 
nature.  The  Wisdom  which  centuries  ago  began 
with  reverence  toward  an  unseen  and  holy  God 
has  come  now  to  measure  itself  with  the  Wis- 
dom which  began  in  blind  worship  of  things  seen 
or  dreaded,  and  which  sought  to  control  them 
by  necromancy  and  enchantment.  Which  is  the 
nobler,  which  sees  things  more  truly  as  they  are 
and  is  more  sanely  adjusted  to  them,  cannot  be 
in  doubt.  The  clear-seeing  eye  of  reverence  and 
righteousness  has  demonstrated  its  power  of  true 
vision;  salvation  is  of  the  Jews.  It  is  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  book  especially  that  the  writer  works 
out  this  idea;  and  this  he  does  not  by  attacking 
the  idolatries  around  him,  as  they  fill  his  sight  and 
poison  the  atmosphere,  but  by  going  into  that  past 
history  wherein  long  time  ago  the  Hebrews  and 
the  Egyptians  came  into  conflict;  especially  the 

281 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

history  of  the  plagues  of  Egypt,  showing  how 
the  very  enchantments  of  the  Egyptians  wrought 
havoc  in  their  souls  and  turned  against  them, 
while  at  the  same  time  the  simple  trust  and  piety 
of  the  Hebrews  was  as  it  were  a  light  in  their 
dwellings  and  a  guide  to  freedom.  The  book  is  a 
philosophy  of  the  vital  elements  of  character;  a 
kind  of  large  parable  of  history,  presenting  in 
veiled  form  the  author's  judgment  of  the  spiritual 
conditions  around  him  and  their  working  tend- 
encies. And  the  fact  that  this  purports  to  be 
the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  is  an  interesting  Nemesis 
of  historical  criticism;  for  the  historic  Solomon 
it  was  who  made  such  wreck  of  his  higher  nature 
by  becoming  entangled  in  Egyptian  alliances  and 
idolatry. 

In  fact,  our  book  is  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  as 
the  writer  views  it  to  have  existed  in  germ  in  the 
historic  king,  and  to  have  run  a  self-purifying 
course  from  more  to  more,  and  to  have  matured 
according  to  the  potency  of  the  germ.  So  one 
prominent  part  of  the  book  is  an  idealized  descrip- 
tion, put  into  Solomon's  own  mouth,  of  his  youth, 
and  his  prayer  for  wisdom,  and  his  experience  of 
Wisdom's  inner  saving  power.  We  have  an  ana- 
logue to  this  in  modern  literature  in  Tennyson's 
"  Idylls  of  the  King;  "  which  portray  King  Arthur 

282 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

and  his  Round  Table,  not  as  they  would  have  been 
recognized  by  us  if  we  had  been  transported  to 
their  actual  age  and  surroundings,  not  as  history 
could  verify  them  at  all,  but  as  they,  possessing 
the  divine  germ  of  manhood,  had  it  in  them  to 
be,  and  as  that  germ  would  mature  to  fruitage  in 
the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  all  one  power  of  man- 
hood: the  occasion,  the  environment,  the  heritage 
of  years,  the  greater  light  and  vision,  bring  it  out. 

One  more  veiled  remonstrance  the  book  con- 
tains; veiled,  I  say,  for  the  times  with  their  Greek 
exposure  have  brought  greater  amenity  into  the 
literary  tone:  a  remonstrance,  very  gentle  and 
courteous,  against  what  the  writer  deems  the  bad 
tendency  of  Ecclesiastes'  counsel.  It  is  directed 
especially  against  his  counsel  of  eating  and  drink- 
ing and  enjoying  life,  coming  as  this  does  in  the 
face  of  his  assertion  that  we  cannot  see  beyond 
this  earthly  existence.  The  writer  judges  Eccle- 
siastes superficially,  and  turns  aside,  or  rather  fails 
to  fathom,  the  real  gist  of  his  argument.  It  is  in 
fact  the  same  snap  judgment  that  hasty  readers 
have  always  caught  up,  and  perhaps  the  judgment 
that  the  years  since  Ecclesiastes  had  deposited  in 
the  popular  heart  as  a  sort  of  tag  by  which  to  mark 
the  sage's  mind.  It  amounts  in  our  author's  case, 
as  it  has  amounted  since,  to  attributing  to  Eccle- 

283 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

siastes,  or  perhaps  to  a  school  which  had  exploited 
some  of  his  supposedly  Epicurean  tendencies, 
an  animus  against  righteousness,  and  a  native 
bias  toward  profane  and  unseemly  revelry;  a 
kind  of  reckless  levity  in  the  face  of  death  and 
vanity.  "Court  not  death,"  our  author  begins, 
"in  the  error  of  your  life;  neither  draw  upon 
yourselves  destruction  by  the  works  of  your 
hands;"  then  going  on  to  describe  the  "ungodly 
men  who  by  their  hands  and  their  words  called 
death  unto  them,"  he  thus  estimates  their  reason- 
ing: "For  they  said  within  themselves,  reasoning 
not  aright  [who  "they"  are  cannot  remain  doubt- 
ful to  one  who  has  read  Ecclesiastes]:  'Short 
and  sorrowful  is  our  life;  and  there  is  no  healing 
when  a  man  cometh  to  his  end,  and  none  was 
ever  known  that  gave  release  from  Hades.  Be- 
cause by  mere  chance  were  we  born,  and  here- 
after we  shall  be  as  though  we  had  never  been; 
because  the  breath  in  our  nostrils  is  smoke,  and 
while  our  heart  beateth  reason  is  a  spark,  which 
being  extinguished,  the  body  shall  be  turned  into 
ashes,  and  the  spirit  shall  be  dispersed  as  thin  air. 
And  our  name  shall  be  forgotten  in  time,  and  no 
man  shall  remember  our  works;  and  our  life  shall 
pass  away  as  the  traces  of  a  cloud,  and  shall  be 
scattered  as  is  a  mist,  when  it  is  chased  by  the 

284 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

beams  of  the  sun,  and  overcome  by  the  heat 
thereof.  For  our  allotted  time  is  the  passing  of  a 
shadow,  and  our  end  retreateth  not;  because  it 
is  fast  sealed,  and  none  turneth  it  back.  Come 
therefore  and  let  us  enjoy  the  good  things  that 
now  are;  and  let  us  use  the  creation  with  all  our 
soul  as  youth's  possession.  Let  us  fill  ourselves 
with  costly  wine  and  perfumes,  and  let  no  flower 
of  spring  pass  us  by;  let  us  crown  ourselves  with 
rosebuds  before  they  be  withered;  let  none  of  us 
go  without  his  share  in  our  proud  revelry;  every- 
where let  us  leave  tokens  of  our  mirth;  because 
this  is  our  portion,  and  our  lot  is  this.'  "  1 

All  this  is  what  our  author  attributes  to  those 
who  are  "reasoning  not  aright;"  and  the  phrases 
and  turns  of  expression  that  he  brings  in  from 
Ecclesiastes  betray  what  "reasoning"  he  had  all 
the  while  in  mind.  It  is  his  veiled  opposition 
to  what  he  considers  the  baleful  influence  of  such 
counsel  as  Ecclesiastes  gives.  At  the  same  time 
he  twists  Ecclesiastes  out  of  true;  amplifies  him 
toward  the  depraved  instead  of  the  wisely  right- 
eous tendency  for  which  Ecclesiastes  really  stands. 
We  must  conclude  it  to  be  a  case  of  a  small  mind 
attacking  a  large  one,  in  the  bias  of  a  superficial 
criticism. 

1  Wisdom  ii,  1-9. 
285 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

I  have  quoted  this  passage  in  order  to  illustrate 
not  only  the  thought  of  our  author  but  his  style. 
We  can  see  here  the  weakness  no  less  than  the 
beauty  of  it.  In  his  hands  the  form  of  the  mashal 
has  reached  the  farthest  possible  remove  from 
the  terse,  crisp  couplet  of  the  beginning  of  Wis- 
dom. Here  it  consists  of  a  nucleus  assertion,  like 
the  text  of  a  sermon;  which  assertion  is  then 
enlarged  upon:  drawn  out  in  endless  amplification 
and  we  must  say  dilution,  phase  upon  phase, 
detail  upon  detail,  rolling  out  the  idea  so  thin  that 
we  begin  to  wonder  if  a  thing  that  flows  so  glibly 
can  ever  stop.  He  is  evidently  much  enamored 
of  his  own  literary  fluency.  But  mere  fluency  is  not 
the  worst  of  it.  The  amplification  has  taken  the 
reins  into  its  own  hands,  and  spreads  out  at  its 
own  sweet  will,  no  longer  thinking  primarily  of 
the  truth,  but  only  of  the  picture  and  the  rhythm. 
We  see  this  here  in  his  fatally  fluent  portrayal 
of  Ecclesiastes'  supposably  bad  involvements  and 
propensities.  He  does  not  intend,  perhaps,  to  be 
unjust,  but  his  descriptive  ardor  runs  away  with 
him.  Ecclesiastes'  counsel  to  eat  and  drink,  for 
instance,  awakens  such  images  of  the  accompani- 
ments of  eating  and  drinking  that  his  very  imagi- 
native impulse  drives  him  into  a  deduction  of  idle 
and  dissolute  revelry.  Then,  apparently  pushed 

286 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

on  by  the  momentum  of  that,  he  next  sets  these 
idle  roysterers  to  oppressing  the  righteous  poor, 
and  then  spreads  out  this  idea  in  turn,  until  he 
has  made  the  men  who  began  with  what  he  con- 
siders lame  reasoning  end  with  shameful  cruelty 
and  baseness.  It  is,  to  my  mind,  an  example  of  the 
length  to  which  unbridled  literary  fluency  may 
carry  a  man. 

It  seems  to  me  impossible  to  deny  something  of 
this  diluting  tendency  to  our  exuberant  author. 
Yet  his  book  is  in  many  ways  a  noble  one,  and  has 
had  great  influence.  St.  Paul,  as  Professor  Bacon 
points  out,  has  profited  by  it  largely.  And  fur- 
ther, one  interesting  fact  comes  out  of  this  veiled 
answer  to  Ecclesiastes;  and  that  is,  that  by  this 
author's  time  the  doctrine  of  immortality,  toward 
which  Ecclesiastes  manifested  such  austere  cau- 
tion, had  become  an  accepted  tenet  of  popular 
belief,  as  indeed  it  could  hardly  help  doing.  We 
judge  this  from  the  assurance  with  which  in  his 
sweetly  flowing  way  he  enlarges  upon  the  idea, 
as  if  in  making  it  good  against  the  earlier  sage 
he  had  the  prevailing  tide  of  sentiment  with  him. 
For  the  most  outspoken  pre-Christian  statement 
of  immortality,  indeed,  we  have  to  go  not  to  the 
canonical  writers  but  to  him. 

"The  souls  of  the  righteous,"  he  says,  "  are  in 
287 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

the  hand  of  God,  and  no  torment  shall  touch  them. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  foolish  they  seem  to  have  died; 
and  their  departure  was  accounted  to  be  their  hurt, 
and  their  journeying  away  from  us  to  be  their  ruin : 
but  they  are  in  peace.  For  even  if  in  the  sight  of 
men  they  be  punished,  their  hope  is  full  of  immor- 
tality; and  having  borne  a  little  chastening,  they 
shall  receive  great  good."  1 

I  omit  in  quoting  some  of  the  wordiness  into 
which  he  runs  the  idea;  its  beauty  appears  better 
so.  The  following,  which  contains  somewhat  less 
padding  than  usual,  is  still  more  noteworthy:  — 

"But  a  righteous  man,  though  he  die  before 
his  time,  shall  be  at  rest.  For  honorable  old  age 
is  not  that  which  standeth  in  length  of  time,  nor 
is  its  measure  given  by  number  of  years;  but 
understanding  is  gray  hairs  unto  men,  and  an 
unspotted  life  is  ripe  old  age.  Being  found  well- 
pleasing  unto  God  he  was  beloved  of  him,  and 
while  living  among  sinners  he  was  translated. 
.  .  .  Being  made  perfect  in  a  little  while,  he  ful- 
filled long  years;  for  his  soul  was  pleasing  unto 
the  Lord;  therefore  hasted  he  out  of  the  midst  of 
wickedness."  2 

A  rather  colorless  immortality  this,  to  be  sure; 
no  aspiration,  no  strong-pinioned,  eagle-soaring 

1  Wisdom  iii,  1-5.  2  Wisdom  iv,  7-14. 

2S8 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 
life  here,  any  more  than  in  Sheol,  but  just  a  tran- 
quil assurance  of  rest,  of  cessation  of  strife  and 
disturbance.  "That  is  how  I  figure  heaven,"  the 
turbulent-minded  Carlyle  once  said,  "just  rest.'* 
Jesus  Sirach,  too,  images  it  in  the  same  way:  — 

"Weep  for  the  dead  [he  says],  for  light  hath  failed  him; 
And  weep  for  a  fool,  for  understanding  hath  failed  him: 
Weep  more  sweetly  for  the  dead,  because  he  hath  found  rest; 
But  the  life  of  the  fool  is  worse  than  death."  1 

That  was  as  far  as  the  pre-Christian  conscious- 
ness could  get :  an  eventual  subsidence,  so  to  say, 
of  this  turmoil  of  existence,  the  escape,  somewhere 
and  somehow,  from  the  evils  and  hazards  of  liv- 
ing, into  peace. 

And  in  general  this  is  a  fair  image  of  the  result 
to  which  these  "many  books,"  with  their  placidly 
ruminating  thought,  their  marking  time,  have 
conducted  the  literature  of  Wisdom.  They  have 
added  nothing  essential  to  Ecclesiastes,  however 
truly  they  may  have  filled  gaps  in  the  tissue  of  life, 
or  rounded  out  the  body  of  truth.  Even  their  im- 
mortality is  a  passive  thing,  not  truly  vital.  Their 
regards  are  turned  mainly  to  the  past;  and  here 
indeed  they  have  done  the  world  great  service, 
ranging  over  a  divinely  ordered  history,  and  pro- 
moting, as  Professor  Cheyne  says  of  Ecclesiasti- 
cus,  "the  reconciliation  between  the  practical 

1  Ecclesiasticus  xxii,  n. 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM" 

ethics  of  the  inspired  'wise  men  '  of  old  and  the 
all-embracing  demands  of  the  Law."  Thus  they 
did  much  to  weave  the  three  strands,  the  contri- 
butions of  prophet,  priest,  and  sage,  together  into 
one  unitary  cable  of  noble  teaching.  But  in  general 
one  gets  from  them  a  sense  of  tapering  off,  of 
gradual  drawing  of  the  finished  lines  together, 
as  if,  in  order  to  go  on,  Wisdom  needed  a  new 
access  of  vitality.  We  read  the  later  utterances  of 
the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  with  their  boundless 
volubility  of  amplification,  and  it  sometimes  seems 
as  if  the  author  were  not  speaking  because  he  had 
something  to  say,  but  because  he  was  wound  up, 
or  perhaps  had  a  contract,  to  say  something.  You 
perceive  the  difference.  Some  of  us  have  read 
more  modern  literature  that  produced  a  similar 
impression.  Of  making  many  books,  in  fact, 
there  is  no  end;  at  least,  the  end  is  not  yet. 


But  have  we,  then,  no  positive  result  to  show  for 
all  this  literary  activity  and  diffusion  ?  Has  Wis- 
dom too  run  her  cycle,  like  Koheleth's  great  wheel 
of  being,  and  returned  to  her  starting-point;  and 
has  she  gathered  no  momentum,  no  surplusage  of 
forward-surging  energy  ?  Is  she  dying  —  or  getting 
ready  to  live  ? 

290 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

That  one  great  movement  of  things,  running  its 
course,  should  gradually  subside  on  itself  and 
cease  is  quite  in  the  order  of  nature  and  progress. 

"The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways, 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world,"  l 

is  the  word  that  King  Arthur,  wounded  to  the 
death,  speaks  to  comfort  the  one  surviving  knight 
of  the  Round  Table,  from  the  barge  that  is  bearing 
him  away.  And  here  in  Wisdom  we  have  reached 
a  landing-stage  from  which  we  can  begin  to  see 
how  inevitably  some  of  the  old  means  of  climbing 
and  scaffolding,  having  served  their  purpose,  must 
be  discontinued. 

Let  us  see  how  this  is.  Ecclesiastes  has  conducted 
us  to  a  broad  ideal  of  manhood  character  whereon 
the  soul,  sufficient  to  itself  and  ready  for  judgment, 
can  take  its  destiny  in  confidence  and  stand  alone. 
We  are,  so  to  say,  out  of  leading-strings.  In  the 
presence  of  such  assured  wisdom  of  character  we 
become  aware  of  the  comparative  deadness  of 
accumulating  advice,  rules,  counsels,  laws;  they 
have  become  stale,  as  Job's  maxims  did  to  him.  In 
the  light  and  strength  we  have,  we  can  do  some- 
thing to  make  our  own  rules  of  living.  Ecclesiastes 
felt  this  when  he  advised  his  disciple  not  to  be  too 

1  Tennyson,  Morte  <T  Arthur. 
291 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

righteous  nor  too  wicked,  not  too  abysmally  wise 
and  not  a  self-made  fool.  He  had  the  idea  of  being 
no  longer  an  apprentice,  painfully  enslaved  to 
procedures  and  methods,  but  a  master  workman, 
who  could  take  advantage  of  his  rules,  and  even 
for  a  higher  object  transcend  them,  because  the 
object  of  them  was  in  him,  a  second  nature.  We 
see  also  something  like  this  in  the  evolution  of 
the  literary  form,  the  mashal,  from  antithetic  point 
to  diffused  discursiveness.  As  Wisdom  went  on, 
and  the  substantial  old  principles  were  all  discov- 
ered, she  had  to  go  farther  afield  for  maxims,  had 
to  hunt  out  novelties  of  expression  or  analogy,  or 
to  adduce  more  minute  and  subtle  applications. 
Ecclesiastes  betrays  his  feeling  of  this  necessity, 
in  some  degree,  by  searching  out  pithy  sayings 
from  his  collection  and  inlaying  them,  as  a  kind 
of  spice  and  clinching,  with  his  own  course  of 
thought.  Jesus  Sirach,  too,  feels  that  the  supply  is 
getting  so  well  gathered  that  new  material  has  to 
be  hunted  for,  and  that  he  himself  is  rather  late  in 
the  field. 

"And  I  awaked  up  last  [he  says], 
As  one  that  gleaneth  after  the  grape-gatherers: 
By  the  blessing  of  the  Lord  I  got  before  them, 
And  filled  my  wine-press  as  one  that  gathereth  grapes."  l 

1  Ecclesiasticus  xxxiii,  16. 
292 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 
Such  a  supply  of  precept  must  eventually  run  out, 
or  become  increasingly  far-fetched;  just  as,  ac- 
cording to  what  the  novelists  are  beginning  to  say, 
the  effective  plots  and  situations  are  becoming 
used  up.  Ecclesiasticus  is  still  copious,  but  the 
edge  is  getting  worn,  the  mashal  does  not  bite,  like 
fresh  new  truth.  The  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  too, 
loses  its  bite;  it  is  thinned  out  into  a  long-drawn 
sweetness.  All  this,  of  course,  is  a  matter  of  form, 
but  it  connotes  something  deeper.  The  aphorism 
itself,  the  counsel,  is  losing  its  freshness  be- 
cause man  already  knows  so  well  what  to  do,  and 
needs  less  to  be  told.  In  fact,  character  is  striking 
deeper  root  in  humanity,  becoming  more  initia- 
tive, more  able  to  walk  independently  of  counsel, 
because  the  sense  of  counsel,  the  Wisdom,  is 
becoming  increasingly  a  matter  of  course. 

And  this  in  fact  is  what  is  taking  place  among 
all  the  twelve  tribes  that  are  scattered  abroad. 
This  making  of  many  books  implies  literary  activ- 
ity; it  implies  also  that  general  ferment  and  inter- 
est which  produces  literary  activity.  The  books  of 
a  nation  grow  out  of  the  nation's  soil;  they  return 
also  to  the  soil  again,  to  fertilize  it  anew.  The 
familiar,  every-day,  comrade-like  counsel  of  the 
sages,  as  they  took  their  place  in  the  city  gates,  or 
made  their  common-sense  researches  in  life  and 

293 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

experience  and  history,  has  had  an  untold  leaven- 
ing effect  on  all  the  common  and  workday  classes; 
of  which  the  making  of  many  books  has  been  only 
a  casual  indication,  a  straw  showing  which  way 
the  great  current  of  the  nation's  wholesomest 
spirit  was  setting. 

It  is  with  the  atmosphere  of  a  people's  life,  the 
fragrance  —  or  miasm  —  of  sentiment  and  con- 
trolling motive  with  which  the  air  is  laden,  that  we 
must  reckon,  if  we  would  know  the  true  inwardness 
of  that  nation's  character.  Travellers  say  that  one 
who  has  not  been  in  Oriental  countries,  like  Egypt 
or  India,  can  have  no  idea  of  the  enormous  differ- 
ence between  countries,  as  regards  the  whole  tone 
and  consciousness  of  things,  the  nameless  rapport 
and  presupposition  which  either  enables  a  man  to 
lean  on  his  neighbor's  heart,  as  knowing  that  there 
is  truth  there,  or  which  compels  him  to  maintain 
an  attitude  of  suspicion  and  distrust.  The  very  air 
may  be  poisoned  with  falseness  and  treachery  and 
spiritual  malaria,  or  fragrant  with  honesty  and 
good-will.  And  it  all  foots  back  to  the  ideas,  the 
pervading  pulse  of  sentiment  and  gentle  constraint, 
with  which  the  whole  lump  is  leavened.  To  keep 
the  atmosphere  of  a  nation  pure,  there  must  cir- 
culate a  disinfectant  and  ozonic  power  of  princi- 
ple, of  well-defined  standards,  of  healthy  insight. 

294 


THE  MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

"Where  there  is  no  vision,"  says  one  of  the 
Hezekian  proverbs,  "the  people  perish,"  —  or  to 
translate  more  accurately,  "are  let  loose  and  let 
down."  I  wonder  if,  in  our  land  of  free  speech 
and  activities,  we  are  sufficiently  mindful  of  what 
is  really  the  greatest  blessing  of  all,  the  clear,  pure, 
righteous  air  of  America,  the  heritage  from  the 
noble  ideas  of  our  fathers,  and  from  the  Bible 
truth  in  which  they  and  we  have  been  nurtured. 
Well,  here  we  see  that  Bible  truth  as  it  were 
in  the  making;  emerging  out  of  the  silent  depths 
into  kindly  human  counsel,  and  beginning  to  vi- 
brate in  the  common  heart.  We  see  what  Wisdom 
is  coming  to  be  in  the  field  and  market,  and  among 
the  fishermen  of  the  lake,  and  at  home  in  Galilean 
villages,  Cana  and  Capernaum  and  Nazareth,  and 
among  those  sincere-minded  people  who  are  "wait- 
ing for  the  consolation  of  Israel:  "  a  reasonable- 
ness, a  sane  proportioning  of  things,  a  felt  power 
of  inner  authority;  rich  in  homely  precepts  and 
aphorisms,  feeding  on  them  as  on  daily  food,  yet 
not  depending  on  them  blindly,  as  if  life  were  an 
affair  of  rules  and  recipes;  because  the  character 
evolved  from  its  principles  is  becoming  a  people's 
second  nature.  The  nation  is  being  pervasively 
educated  on  its  way  to  that  springtide  ideal  of  the 
poet :  — 

295 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

"  *T  is  as  easy  now  for  the  heart  to  be  true 
As  for  grass  to  be  green  or  skies  to  be  blue, — 
'T  is  the  natural  way  of  living."  l 

We  see  the  fruits  of  it  not  yet;  for  not  yet  has 
the  voice  reached  us  from  that  Galilean  village  to 
whose  peaceful  precincts  we  trace,  on  its  earthly 
side,  "  the  Wisdom  of  God  and  the  power  of  God ;" 
but  the  influences  are  already  in  motion,  the  seed- 
germ  has  been  sown;  and  though  for  the  moment 
it  fall  into  the  ground  and  die,  yet  earth  and  air 
and  sunshine  and  kindly  rain  have  it  in  keeping. 
The  seed  that  dies,  so  the  soil  is  clean  and  well- 
harrowed,  the  seed  sown  by  sages  in  experience 
and  neighborly  counsel,  the  seed  hidden  away  in 
many  obscure  books  and  meditative  hearts,  is  get- 
ting ready  to  live  again,  in  harvests. 

When  Carlyle's  meditative  hero  Teufelsdrockh 
had  survived  the  vehement  reaction  and  unrest 
of  his  Everlasting  No,  and  set  his  soul  in  grim 
defiance  against  the  falsities  of  his  universe,  there 
ensued  a  period  which  the  author  named  The 
Centre  of  Indifference:  a  saner  period,  wherein, 
though  the  light  of  final  solution  had  not  yet  ar- 
rived, the  soul,  casting  its  eyes  around,  became 
more  fully  aware  than  before  of  brother-men,  with 
their  thoughts  and  deeds,  of  comrade  hearts,  beat- 

1  Lowell,  Sir  Launfal. 
296 


THE   MAKING  OF  MANY  BOOKS 

ing  on  to  fulfil  also  their  portion  of  the  same  great 
heritage  of  life,  of  the  past  and  what  it  had 
bequeathed,  of  the  masters  of  speech  and  action, 
of  the  experience  which  was  drawing  him  in  from 
isolation  to  the  interest  of  a  world.  The  Wisdom 
that  we  have  studied  has  had  to  pronounce,  as  it 
were  out  of  the  unseen,  a  No  on  many  things:  on 
the  manifold  folly  of  fools;  on  the  hardness  and 
self-deception  of  cant;  on  the  idle  and  self-pleasing 
dreams  of  the  illusioned.  And  in  the  subject  we 
have  considered  in  this  chapter  it  has  been  as  if 
there  had  ensued  a  season  of  calm  weather,  a  centre 
of  indifference,  wherein  the  soul  of  Wisdom  could 
look  around  and  in  more  leisurely  mood  take  her 
bearings.  But  this  Centre  of  Indifference  is  by  no 
means  a  dead  centre.  Life  is  pulsing  there,  and  the 
upbuilding  powers  of  manhood;  —  as  Carlyle  says 
of  his  hero:  "Yet  surely  his  bands  are  loosening; 
one  day  he  will  hurl  the  burden  far  from  him, 
and  bound  forth  free  and  with  a  second  youth."  * 
The  dawn  is  even  now  whitening  the  eastern  sky; 
the  soul  so  long  passive,  so  long  tutored  and  led 
and  counselled  and  acted  upon,  must  learn  to  act 
in  its  own  divinely  naturalized  Wisdom;  its  goal 
must  soon  be  the  Everlasting  Yea. 

1  Carlyle,  Sartor  Resartus,  Book  II,  chap.  viiL 


297 


VII 
THE   WISDOM   OF   GOD 


THE  NEW  ERA 

I.  The  philosophic  ideal. 

II.  The  responding  life. 

III.  The  test  in  action. 

IV.  Homily  and  story. 


VII 
THE   WISDOM   OF   GOD 

SINCE  the  period  covered  by  our  former 
chapters  there  has  intervened  the  cardinal 
event  from  which  the  world  numbers  its 
years;  as  if  with  that  event  mankind  had  begun 
to  live;  as  if  it  were  only  a  matter  of  nineteen  cen- 
turies ago  that  the  busy  wheels  of  history  had  be- 
gun so  to  move,  and  to  such  result,  that  the  records 
of  time  could  count  their  product  as  accomplished 
work.  And  the  world's  calendar,  from  whatever 
cause  so  reckoned,  is  in  this  regard  correct.  Then 
it  was  that  what  we  may  call  manhood  truly  began 
to  live;  because  then  it  was,  for  the  first  time,  that 
life  absolute  and  rounded,  life  emancipate  and 
adult,  came  to  full  light  and  function.  All  before 
that,  noble  as  it  was  in  its  ardor  of  discovery  and 
ordered  beauty  of  growth,  was  after  all  but  a  child- 
hood, led  by  law  and  fed  by  wisdom;  a  prepara- 
tory schooling,  wherein  a  race  under  tutors  and 
governors  was  getting  ready  to  live,  preparing 
itself  to  emerge  eventually  into  that  supreme  sta- 
dium of  manhood  where  the  law  of  being  should 
be  the  law  of  the  spirit  of  life,  and  the  wisdom  of 

301 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

living  should  be  dictated  no  longer  from  without 
but  from  within. 

With  all  this  the  genius  and  literature  of  Wis- 
dom are  intimately  involved.  It  must  share,  and 
share  equally,  in  the  transfigured  destiny  of  the 
other  strains  of  scripture  utterance.  The  vener- 
able Mosaic  law,  as  we  know,  so  long  in  the 
keeping  of  priests  and  sanhedrim,  died  at  last 
as  a  body  of  extrinsic  rules,  but  not  until  it  had 
received  a  new  lease  of  life,  in  such  an  expression 
and  power  as  it  never  had  known  before.  Prophecy 
too  died,  in  the  person  of  its  last  prophet,  than 
whom  none  among  the  sons  of  men  was  greater; 
but  even  while  John  the  Baptist  yet  spoke,  his 
word  and  the  word  of  his  predecessors  were  melt- 
ing into  the  glory  of  perfect  fulfilment.  What  then 
became  of  Wisdom  ?  We  have  seen  how  it  bur- 
geoned in  men's  esteem  until  to  some  of  its  lightest 
utterances  they  gave  the  name  of  oracle,  as  if  it 
too  were  a  prophetic  word,  vitalized  by  divine 
authority.  Then,  after  it  had  established  great 
solid  principles  of  life  among  men,  it  seemed  for  a 
while  to  subside  to  the  meditations  of  litterateurs 
and  dilettants;  and  then  we  lose  the  thread  of  it 
for  a  while,  having  nowhere  to  look,  except  per- 
haps to  the  scribes,  who  seem  to  be  running  it  into 
the  swamps  of  Targums  and  Talmuds,  a  sorry 

302 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

anticlimax,  on  the  whole;  or  possibly,  though  no 
one  would  suspect  this,  back  into  the  country, 
somewhere  in  the  Galilee  or  circuit  of  the  Gen- 
tiles, where  men's  view  of  life  is  less  academic 
and  sophisticated.  And  here,  in  fact,  strange  as 
it  may  seem,  is  where  we  find  it.  Nature  has 
taken  fresh  clay  from  the  soil  where  the  people's 
heart  beats  most  truly,  and  out  of  it  has  moulded 
the  Sage  of  sages,  who  as  soon  as  He  opens  His 
mouth  brings  to  men  words  which  elicit  the  deep 
response  of  the  universal  heart,  words  whose  wis- 
dom evidences  itself,  because  He  speaks  as  one 
having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes.  Here, 
then,  the  Wisdom  which  seemed  ready  to  die  has 
risen  again,  risen  not  in  philosophy  alone  but  in 
life;  and  in  such  majesty  of  utterance  and  deed 
that  when  men  get  used  to  it,  and  compare  it  with 
the  ideals  of  men,  they  are  fain  to  call  it  the  Wis- 
dom of  God. 

To  get  at  the  soul  of  this  new  Wisdom,  and  to 
make  clear  not  only  its  radical  difference  from 
what  has  gone  before,  but  what  is  equally  real,  its 
essential  union  and  continuity  with  the  cruder  but 
preparatory  ideals  of  the  past,  is  the  business  of 
this  chapter. 


303 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 


When  this  Wisdom  of  God  came  to  men,  it  had 
estranging,  apparently  unworkable  features.  Per- 
haps this  must  needs  be  the  case  with  anything 
that  comes  from  heaven  to  measure  itself  with  the 
standards  of  earth.  "For  my  thoughts  are  not 
your  thoughts,  neither  are  your  ways  my  ways, 
saith  the  Lord,"  an  ancient  prophecy  had  said; 
and  the  reason  it  went  on  to  give  was  that  the  ways 
of  this  new  Wisdom  are  higher,  as  much  higher 
as  heaven  is  higher  than  earth.  There  is  a  Truth 
somewhere  above,  in  which  all  the  converging 
ideals  of  Wisdom  meet,  if  you  will  follow  them  far 
enough.  The  trouble  is,  men  get  too  soon  to  the 
end  of  their  tether.  And  so  when  the  Jews,  who 
like  the  scientists  estimate  things  by  signs,  saw 
this  new  manifestation  of  Wisdom,  they  could  not 
discern  what  the  sign  meant,  and  therefore  would 
not  commit  themselves  to  its  truth.  It  was  no 
Wisdom  to  them,  but  only  a  stumbling-block.  To 
the  Greeks  likewise,  who  spent  their  days  looking 
for  a  reasonable  philosophy  of  life,  this  new  thing 
was  sheer  foolishness,  did  not  seem  to  have  the 
sanity  and  consistency  of  a  philosophy  at  all.  And 
the  fact  is,  much  may  be  said  for  both  Jew  and 
Greek.  The  Wisdom  of  God  was  and  is  unrea- 

304 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

sonable,  just  as  unreasonable  as  it  can  be;  and 
herein  lies  its  saving  quality,  making  it  the  hope 
of  the  world.  The  hope  of  the  world,  we  may 
affirm,  of  its  new  life,  of  its  vital  progress  in  man- 
hood, lay  in  the  coming  of  a  new  thing,  what  we 
call  faith,  a  heroic  faith  which,  in  the  promotion  of 
a  new  order,  would  dare  and  do  venturesome,  un- 
reasonable, seemingly  hopeless  things.  Analyze  the 
inner  forces  of  history,  and  you  will  see  this  is 
so.  The  world,  heathen  and  Jewish  alike,  had 
justly  defined  all  the  reasonable  common-sense 
virtues.  We  have  seen  how  in  these  directions  the 
Apocryphal  sages  had  reached  a  point  where  they 
had  practically  exhausted  the  big  issues  of  life 
and  were  going  farther  and  farther  afield  for  new 
ideas.  Justice  and  temperance  and  self-respect 
and  prudence  and  tact  and  moderation :  all  these 
eminently  reasonable  things  were  fairly  well  incor- 
porated into  the  working  ideals  of  life.  And  yet 
somehow  life  was  at  a  kind  of  deadlock;  and 
such  an  enigma  that  the  accredited  leaders,  in 
whose  hands  were  the  executive  functions,  were 
asking  in  dazed  bewilderment,  "What  is  truth  ?" 
It  was  time  to  make  trial  of  the  unreasonable 
things:  to  drop  the  self-aggrandizing  pride  and 
try  humility  and  meekness;  to  drop  that  self- 
bound  reason  which  would  go  only  so  far  as  it 

305 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

could  see  the  end,  and  try  faith  in  what  was 
out  of  sight;  to  hope  for  a  world  whose  condition 
seemed  hopeless;  to  love  a  humanity  which  had 
become  base  and  unlovely.  An  estranging  thing 
this,  to  Jew  and  Greek,  to  the  scientific  and  the 
philosophical  mind  alike;  a  stumbling-block  and 
a  foolishness.  But  this,  just  this,  was  the  Wis- 
dom of  God;  and  in  the  long  run  it  proved  to 
have  laid  in  life  a  foundation  other  than  which 
no  man  can  lay. 

At  the  beginning  of  our  discussion  we  remarked 
that  the  utterances  of  the  sages,  unrelated  and 
unsystematic  as  their  mashals  seemed,  were  really 
on  their  way  to  a  full-orbed  and  unitary  philosophy 
of  life;  and  we  have  seen  how  Job  and  Koheleth 
—  yes,  and  Satan,  we  cannot  leave  him  out  — 
contributed,  in  ways  positive  and  negative,  to 
make  that  edifice  of  philosophy  stand  out  clear 
and  self-justifying.  In  order  now  to  realize  how 
truly  this  Wisdom  of  God  is  not  an  unmotived 
irruption  into  the  older  system,  reversing  it  all  as 
by  a  divine  fiat,  but  the  sequel  and  crown  and 
proper  solution  of  it,  we  must  pick  up  some  of  the 
dropped  and  broken  threads  that  in  our  progress 
hitherto  have  been  discovered. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  there  were  such.  In 
Ecclesiastes,  especially,  that  keenest  and  most 

306 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

searching  philosophy  of  Wisdom,  the  discovery 
was  made,  as  was  in  passing  remarked,  that 
the  sage  had  reached  one  impasse  of  life  where 
Wisdom  herself,  for  all  her  honest  venturesome- 
ness  of  insight,  was  fairly  baffled.1  We  will  remem- 
ber, too,  how  all  the  brave  good  cheer  of  his  book 
could  not  make  it  wholly  victorious,  could  not 
overcome  that  immense  undertow,  as  it  were  a 
cosmic  tide,  of  sad  mystery  and  fate.  Its  cheer, 
whenever  it  confronted  that  enigma,  was  like 
what  Tennyson  describes  of  one  whose  sight  is 
lost:  who  is  kindly  with  his  kind,  who  talks  and 
jests  and  enters  genially  into  the  life  of  young 
and  old,  and  yet  all  the  while  is  conscious  of  a 
void  which  no  companionship  can  fill. 

"  He  plays  with  threads,  he  beats  his  chair 
For  pastime,  dreaming  of  the  sky; 
His  inner  day  can  never  die, 
His  night  of  loss  is  always  there."  J 

Only,  in  Ecclesiastes  the  lack  is  of  something  not 
yet  revealed;  a  lack  which,  though  he  sees  and 
makes  the  best  of  it,  still  leaves  us  painfully  aware 
that  his  Wisdom  falls  in  an  unfinal  dispensation, 
an  era  of  manhood  life  not  fully  illumined.  Some- 
how, he  cannot  yet  tell  how,  there  is  a  barrier  to 
overcome,  a  height  to  surmount,  before  the  final 

1  See  above,  p.  203. 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  cxvi. 

307 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

table-land  is  reached,  from  whence,  as  we  look 
around,  the  whole  landscape  of  life  lies  in  illumi- 
nate splendor,  no  rock  or  tree  or  river  hidden,  no 
vital  element  missing,  and  all  in  true  perspective 
and  proportion. 

To  be  more  specific:  We  recall  how  the  great 
sombre  void  in  Ecclesiastes'  view  of  things  re- 
duced itself  to  an  essential  lack  of  outlook.  He 
was  hemmed  in,  could  not  see  as  it  were  over 
the  margin,  to  know  how  it  all  came  out  to  solu- 
tion. The  grand  master-key  of  things  was  not  yet 
found.  "All  this,"  he  says,  "have  I  tried  by  wis- 
dom; I  said,  Oh,  let  me  be  wise  —  and  it  was  far 
from  me.  Far  off,  that  which  is;  and  deep,  deep 
—  who  shall  find  it  ?  "  Then  by  the  side  of  this 
was  the  felt  lack  which  haunted  him  all  along, 
and  which  his  brave  endeavors  to  supply  in  this 
and  that  particular  only  accentuated  the  more: 
the  elemental  lack  of  surplusage,  yithron.  What 
profit  hath  man  in  all  his  labor;  what  overplus 
of  energy  hath  nature  in  all  its  weary  round  ; 
what  residuum  of  progress,  or  improvement,  or 
permanence,  hath  history  to  show,  in  an  order 
of  things  wherein  there  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun  ?  The  world,  as  he  felt  its  movement, 
seemed  to  have  used  up  all  its  troubled  labor  in 
just  keeping  alive  till  the  next  generation  came 

308 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

on;  and  so  the  ongoings  of  human  things  reduced 
themselves  virtually  to  vanity,  breath,  or  as  an 
old  teacher  of  mine  used  to  express  it,  "a  long- 
drawn  sigh." 

These  two  lacks  in  his  world,  the  lack  of 
yithron  and  the  lack  of  eventual  outlook,  were 
in  essence  one  and  inseparable.  Like  Kipling's 
visionary  lama,  he  felt  himself  and  his  kind  bound 
to  a  huge  cosmic  wheel  of  being,  wherein,  so  to 
say,  there  was  just  enough  motive-power  to  make 
the  machine  go,  and  none  to  spare  for  productive 
work;  just  enough  vitality  for  uses  of  this  world 
of  time  and  space,  and  nothing  over.  The  laws  of 
being  which  he  and  the  sages  had  been  at  such 
pains  to  discover,  laws  Mosaic  and  cosmic,  were 
merely  laws,  that  was  all;  ordered  modes  of  work- 
ing. They  had  their  appointed  course  and  their 
end.  They  could  bring  about  a  recompense  of 
reward  or  retribution,  according  as  they  were 
obeyed  or  transgressed;  but  this  recompense  was 
only  a  posting  of  the  books,  a  kind  of  punctu- 
ation mark  announcing  that  the  end  had  come 
and  the  reckoning  was  complete.  The  law,  as 
such,  did  not  look  beyond,  nor  contain  any  still 
forward  impulse.  In  its  final  verdict  of  judgment 
it  was  simply  turned  back  on  itself.  Even  the 
Wisdom  which  was  concerned  to  use  the  laws  of 

309 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

manhood  sagaciously  was  at  best  only  a  philoso- 
phy of  balance  and  equivalence :  how  to  meet  the 
world  on  such  equal  and  adequate  terms  as  not 
to  let  the  labor  and  crookedness  and  oppression 
of  the  world  be  too  much  for  you  and  draw  you 
under.  If  when  death  comes  you  can  balance  up 
even,  that  is  the  self-measured  extent  of  it. 

Qearly,  then,  in  a  universe  wherein  is  nothing 
but  law,  no  matter  how  fine  and  accurate  are  its 
adjustments,  there  is  in  the  end  nothing  more 
vital  than  a  colossal  machine,  nature  and  man 
involved  in  the  same  vortex  of  revolution;  a  mill 
grinding  out  year  by  year,  generation  by  genera- 
tion, eon  by  eon,  the  same  old  grist.  We  might  as 
well  own  it  up.  Ecclesiastes'  question,  on  his  scale 
and  outlook  of  things,  is  a  problem  for  all  time. 
What  profit,  what  excess  and  overflow  of  life,  to 
justify  all  this  tremendous  outlay  of  toil  and 
energy  ?  It  has  become  with  him,  it  becomes  with 
us  all  as  soon  as  we  realize  it,  a  very  poignant 
question,  which  our  growing  science  only  aggra- 
vates. The  whole  problem  of  life  and  immortality 
lies  wrapped  up  in  it,  and  stands  or  falls  with  it. 

And  yet,  if  Ecclesiastes  had  only  known  it,  how 
near  he  was  approaching  to  the  solution!  The  fact 
that  he  could  feel  and  define  the  lack  was  evidence 
that  he  was  already  getting  above  and  beyond  it; 

310 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

was  already  emerging,  so  to  say,  on  the  solution 
side.  A  new  foothold  of  energy  was  beginning  to 
reveal  its  presence  in  his  heart.  The  immense 
uprise  of  sympathy  which  we  note  in  him,  making 
him  at  times  almost  wish  to  die  or  never  to  have 
been,  as  he  saw  the  routine  and  the  sad  futility  of 
it  all,  is  in  itself  an  eloquent  witness  that  the  essence 
of  the  grand  solution  was  stirring  within  him;  was 
pressing  onward  to  assert  its  presence,  though  he 
had  not  given  it  a  name,  or  learned  to  count  it 
among  the  active  motives  of  life.  Ecclesiastes  was 
no  cynic  or  cold-heart;  he  felt  deeply  for  his  nation 
and  his  kind;  his  heart  ached  and  rejoiced  with 
them.  In  this  very  fact  the  master-key  lies  very 
near  at  hand.  Manhood  is  almost  ready  to  lay 
hold  on  it  and  apply  it  to  wisely  ordered  life.  Why 
are  men's  eyes  still  so  dim  and  holden  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  comes  to  us  as, 
in  the  light  of  to-day,  we  send  our  thoughts  back 
over  Ecclesiastes  and  the  whole  earlier  range  of 
Wisdom  literature.  For  in  this  he  is  by  no  means 
unique.  Proverbs,  Job,  Ecclesiastes,  and  the  Apo- 
cryphal books  are  essentially,  blindly  at  one. 
There  is,  common  to  them  all,  still  another  lack 
that  we  have  to  record :  the  lack  of  what  may  be 
called  the  outward  life-current.  Not  yet  has  Wis- 
dom learned,  in  utter  abandon  of  faith  and  love,  to 

3" 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

cast  herself  forth  on  her  world.  To  do  that  would 
be  just  the  overflow,  the  liberation  of  life  to  excess, 
the  want  of  which  has  become  so  painful.  There 
has  always  hitherto  been,  in  man's  approach  to 
life,  an  arnere  pensee,  a  kind  of  mental  and  spirit- 
ual reservation.  He  has  not  let  himself  go,  has  not 
launched  himself  out  into  space,  so  to  say,  bear- 
ing his  whole  weight  on  his  ideal  of  good.  All 
this  rich  body  of  aphorisms  —  look  them  through 
carefully,  weigh  them,  and  you  will  see  —  come 
back  uniformly  to  a  more  or  less  refined  self- 
regard.  They  constitute,  if  you  please,  a  grand 
manual  of  self-culture,  a  system  of  vigilance  and 
defence,  and  their  aim  is  that,  however  it  may  be 
self-culture  for  an  ultimate  larger  end.  The  pre- 
vailing manhood  current  hitherto  has  been  inward; 
the  self  has  been  the  centre  of  the  system.  To 
be  sure,  there  have  been  constant  prophecies  of  a 
freer  ideal;  the  tender  regard  for  the  poor  and 
the  widow  and  the  orphan  and  the  oppressed,  for 
instance,  has  always  been  in  evidence,  a  pulsa- 
tion to  counteract  the  too  insistent  claims  of  self- 
interest.  Motions  of  faith,  too,  of  venture  toward 
issues  yet  unknown,  begin  to  appear:  Ecclesiastes* 
counsels,  for  instance,  to  cast  our  bread  upon  the 
waters,  giving  a  portion  to  seven,  yes,  to  eight; 
but  even  this  has  an  eye  to  eventual  returns,  it 

312 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 
is  after  all  a  faith  that  we,  some  time  and  some- 
how, shall  profit  the  more  thereby.  The  venture 
is  set  in  the  key  not  of  self-forgetfulness  but  of 
business.  But  the  event  is  on  the  way,  the  larger 
spirit  of  which  these  are  preliminary  foregleams. 
The  faith  which  bids  men  sow  their  seed  morn- 
ing and  evening,1  taking  all  chances,  is  born  first, 
and  is  fluttering  its  wings  for  a  trial  flight,  begin- 
ning to  stir  into  a  motive  and  active  power  of 
Wisdom;  and  so  the  outward  impulse  is  break- 
ing forth  tentatively.  But  the  love  by  which 
ideally  faith  works,  the  love  which  in  its  own 
abundance  of  outflow  forgets  all  thought  of  or  care 
for  returns  ?  Nay,  we  must  await  the  next  surge 
and  uprise  of  the  manhood  spirit  for  that.  We  get 
a  little  pale  sentiment  toward  it,  perhaps,  from 
Greek  philosophy.  Professor  Cheyne  adduces 
from  Jesus  Sirach  "a  few  small  but  exquisite 
gems,  especially  the  sayings  on  friendship,"  but  has 
immediately  to  add,  "counterbalanced,  I  admit, 
by  those  on  the  treatment  of  one's  enemies." 
There  is  no  largeness,  no  abandon  in  it;  it  is  not 
like  the  mighty  love  of  God.  The  grand  outward 
current  of  creative  love,  grace,  truth,  the  headlong 
impulse  of  good-will,  unbounded  and  free,  has  not 
yet  taken  sovereign  possession,  is  not  yet  the  su- 

1  Cf.  Ecclesiastes  xi,  6. 
313 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

preme  motive  power.  Manhood  must  have  the 
divine  spirit  without  measure,  and  faith  stronger 
than  men's  treachery,  nay,  stronger  than  death, 
for  that. 

Here  I  imagine  I  may  seem  to  be  getting  my 
Wisdom  literature  into  too  rare  and  ethereal  a 
medium;  careering  among  the  unattainable  ideals, 
rather  than  treading  firmly  among  practical  prin- 
ciples of  living.  To  speak  of  an  outward  current 
of  love,  which  recks  not  of  self  and  seems  to  tran- 
scend all  rules  and  restraint,  sounds  fanciful,  not 
to  say  wild  and  Quixotic.  One  doubts  whether 
man  is  built  for  such  an  unpractical  working 
impulse.  We  are  so  used  to  the  thought  of  his 
mixing  all  sorts  of  folly  with  his  wisdom  that  we 
have  become  content  to  let  it  be  so;  we  assume, 
as  did  Job's  friends,  that  our  manhood  must  needs 
be  alloyed  with  some  hardening  of  depravity,  in 
order  that  it  may  have  a  proper  cutting  edge  for 
the  management  of  practical  affairs.  But  this  we 
must  note:  our  history  of  Wisdom,  stage  by  stage, 
has  been  the  progressive  history  of  a  rising  spirit- 
ual ideal.  Job's  invincible  integrity,  Ecclesiastes' 
sad  sense  of  a  race's  limitation,  have  been  a  wit- 
ness to  what  the  heart  of  man  is  capable  of.  They 
reveal  a  motion  of  eternity  in  the  heart  of  noblest 
manhood,  which  impels  men  to  live,- as  by  native 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

heroism,  for  a  high  ideal,  though  it  seems  to  close 
every  self-serving  or  worldly  prospect.  And  if 
Job  and  Ecclesiastes  have  reached  so  high  a 
point,  One  shall  in  due  time  succeed  them  who 
stands  on  a  summit  still  higher.  The  prophetic 
soul  of  manhood  is  waiting  for  one  of  our  common 
race  who  has  the  faith  and  courage  to  make  the 
supreme  venture,  to  clarify  the  ideal  and  bear 
his  whole  weight  upon  it. 

ii 

When  that  foretold  Personage  comes,  how 
shall  he  lay  hold  on  the  concepts  and  analogies 
by  which  hitherto  Wisdom  has  made  its  philoso- 
phy of  life  viable  ?  What  shall  be  the  fundamental 
pou  sto,  on  which  the  Wisdom  of  God  shall  base 
its  beauty  and  power  ? 

Let  us  not  make  light  of  the  analogies,  the  con- 
crete images,  by  which  men  hew  their  ideals  to 
practical  use.  Let  us  not  call  their  values  small 
because  these  happen  to  be  literary  values.  Think 
how  immensely  men  have  profited,  through  all  the 
years,  by  imagining  themselves  as  taking  a  jour- 
ney, or  fighting  a  battle,  or  following  a  shepherd, 
or  entering  a  door,  or  eating  bread,  or  quenching 
their  thirst  with  water,  or  bearing  a  cross.  Why, 
our  whole  inner  life  comes  to  expression  not  in 

315 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

abstractions  at  all,  but  in  figures.  The  language 
of  analogy,  the  inquiry  of  an  experience,  What  is 
it  like  ?  is  fundamental  not  to  the  mashal  merely, 
but  to  our  spiritual  nature.  It  inspires  the  editor 
of  the  Solomonic  proverbs,  in  the  rapture  of  his 
discovery  of  human  endowments,  to  picture  his 
victorious  intellect  as  Our  Lady  Wisdom,  almost 
a  goddess,  playing  and  sporting  with  the  elements 
of  life  in  the  presence  of  God.  It  impels  Job,  in 
his  bitter  sense  of  wrong,  to  figure  the  malign 
forces  of  the  universe  as  armed  hosts  combin- 
ing to  hurt  him;  a  conception  to  which  he  gives 
utterance  again  and  again,  and  which  the  Lord 
is  at  pains  to  correct  by  the  sweet  implication  of 
His  address  from  the  whirlwind. 

One  of  the  most  far-reaching  of  these  analogical 
conceptions  has  come  to  light  in  Ecclesiastes.  It 
is  that  figure  in  which,  raising  his  imagination 
to  cosmic  dimensions,  he  has  imaged  life  as  a  self- 
returning  and  self-contained  circuit,  with  no  in- 
crement of  energy;  as  a  vitality  welling  up  to 
the  brim  with  wisdom  and  knowledge  and  joy, 
but  with  no  overflow.  It  is  a  sombre  picture,  on 
the  whole,  of  a  manhood  "cabin'd,  cribb'd,  con- 
fined," in  a  law-enslaved  existence.  The  vague 
sense  of  limitation  has  become  a  world  pain. 

Right  at  this  point  it  is  that  the  central  concep- 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

tion  of  the  new  life  and  wisdom  joins  issue  and 
supplies  the  lack.  That  is  what  our  Lord's  defini- 
tion of  his  mission  amounts  to,  though  he  makes 
the  application  not  to  cosmic  conditions  but  to 
personal  life.  Seizing  on  that  general  self-seeking 
trend  which  has  characterized  the  world  mainly 
hitherto,  he  says  that  others  have  come,  even  at  the 
expense  and  hurt  and  destruction  of  their  fellows, 
to  enrich  and  advantage  themselves;  and  then  in 
contrast  to  these  says,  "I  am  come  that  they  might 
have  life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more  abun- 
dantly." l  Do  not  let  the  obscure  translation  dull 
the  edge  of  this  last  word:  it  is  7re/H<rcroi/,  liter- 
ally, a  superfluity,  an  overflow,  of  life.  Here,  then, 
is  just  the  conception  of  spiritual  surplusage  of 
which  Ecclesiastes  felt  the  want.  It  is  as  if  He 
would  have  the  vital  motive  power  of  man  liber- 
ated in  excess;  not  using  itself  up  with  merely 
existing,  however  symmetrically,  or  in  the  orbit 
of  its  own  gratification,  but  having  a  fund  beyond 
what  is  needed  for  personal  or  earthly  use,  hav- 
ing life  to  spare  and  to  lay  out  in  works  of  love. 
Whether  He  associated  this  idea  of  His  consciously 
with  Ecclesiastes'  conception  or  not,  certainly 
this  is  the  idea  that  more  than  any  other  controls 
His  ministry  of  beneficence  and  wisdom.  He 

1  John  x,  10. 
317 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

works  it  out  in  His  own  life;  He  labors  in  various 
applications  to  get  men  into  the  same  attitude; 
to  make  them  open  the  gateways  of  their  being 
and  let  themselves  go,  as  it  were,  in  radiant,  ex- 
uberant energy.  Instead  of  asking,  What  profit  ? 
and  waiting  to  reckon  their  income  before  their 
character  can  have  free  course,  let  them  rather 
commit  themselves  to  the  venture  of  love  and 
faith,  and  they  will  find  that  they  are  at  one  with 
the  creative  order  of  the  universe.  The  true  image 
of  healthy  life  is  overflow,  exuberance.  We  will  re- 
member how  likewise,  by  an  object-lesson  drawn 
from  her  own  occupation,  Jesus  gave  to  the  Wo- 
man of  Samaria  a  truth  in  which  this  same  essen- 
tial figure  is  involved.  "Whosoever  drinketh  of 
this  water,"  He  says  to  her,  "shall  thirst  again:  but 
whosoever  drinketh  of  the  water  that  I  shall  give 
him  shall  never  thirst;  but  the  water  that  I  shall 
give  him  shall  be  in  him  a  well  of  water  springing 
up  into  everlasting  life."  l  Not  a  reservoir  run- 
ning dry  or  stagnating,  but  an  active  fountain,  well- 
ing always  and  flowing  forth;  not  a  life  returning 
on  itself  to  appease  an  ever  recurring  thirst  and 
ever  using  itself  up  again,  but  a  wealth  of  vital 
motion  from  an  unseen  source,  pouring  itself  roy- 
ally outward,  itself  a  transmitter  of  life,  allaying 

*  John  iv,  13,  14. 
318 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

drought  through  the  same  current  by  which  its 
own  drought  is  allayed.  A  most  impressive  image 
this,  when  we  think  what  has  preceded  it,  and  how 
opposite  was  the  controlling  concept  and  figure 
of  the  older  times.  And  that  this  conception  of 
overflow  has  become  the  determining  idea,  hence- 
forth, of  the  new  manhood  fulness,  forever  con- 
trasting new  to  old,  we  find  expressed  in  St.  Paul's 
later  and  more  literal  summary  of  things.  "The 
first  man  Adam,"  he  says,  "was  made  a  living 
soul;  the  last  Adam  was  made  a  life-giving  spirit." 
Like  the  world-filling  life  of  God,  man's  life  is  to 
be  henceforth  a  radiator  of  life.  And  the  accord- 
ant figure  that  is  used  for  the  multitudinous  life 
of  the  world,  which  henceforth  is  to  take  on  pro- 
gressively the  order  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
is  that  of  leaven,  which,  from  each  life-centre 
spreading,  is  to  impart  and  impart  until  according 
to  each  one's  potency  the  whole  huge  lump  is 
leavened.  Such  is  the  key  of  figure  and  ideal,  all 
vibrating  with  this  thought  of  initiative  and  sur- 
plusage, which,  through  Him  who  is  the  wisdom 
of  God  and  the  power  of  God,  is  destined  to 
dominate  the  heart  of  man.  It  is  the  culmination  of 
the  old,  the  supply  of  a  lack  long  and  elementally 
felt,  yet  also  a  wholly  new  and  transforming  thing. 
With  this  liberation  of  vital  energy  in  excess, 
319 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

if  we  may  so  name  this  life  of  the  spirit,  comes 
also  the  outlook  which  Ecclesiastes  so  sadly  missed 
and  so  heroically  denied.  Immortality  is  brought 
to  light  as  well  as  life;  is  in  fact  a  correlate  of  the 
life  absolute  and  not  dissociable  from  it.  Only, 
it  is  not  the  kind  of  immortality  which  sets  men 
to  peering  beyond  the  grave  and  trying  to  tell 
their  fortunes;  not  the  kind  that  is  revealed  by 
vaticination  and  clairvoyance.  The  old  assertion 
of  Ecclesiastes,  which  faces  a  permanent  fact,  still 
holds  as  true  as  ever,  that  "he  hath  put  eternity 
in  their  heart;  yet  not  so  that  man  findeth  out 
the  work  which  God  hath  wrought,  from  the  be- 
ginning, and  to  the  end."  The  New  Testament, 
indeed,  says  very  little  more  about  the  life  beyond 
the  grave,  and  no  more  about  the  literal  condi- 
tions of  it,  than  does  the  Old  Testament;  nor 
does  it  do  anything  essential  to  clear  up  the  phys- 
ical mystery  of  death.  Lazarus  brings  back  no 
news  of  his  four  days'  visit  to  the  undiscovered 
land.  That  is  not  what  a  revelation  of  immortality 
means;  and  if  that  alone  were  revealed  to  man, 
or  were  named  as  a  chief  or  even  important  thing 
to  live  for,  manhood  would  be  unspeakably  the 
poorer  and  pettier.  No  more  truly  does  this  im- 
mortality come  to  light  as  a  post-obituary  exist- 
ence of  escape  and  rest,  such  as  the  Wisdom  of 

320 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

Solomon  figured;  as  if  manhood  were  eventually 
to  be  tapered  down  to  occupying  a  pleasant  room 
in  Sheol,  or  a  bed  in  Abraham's  bosom. 

Rather,  we  now  have  the  data  to  give  it  a  new 
name,  and  a  wholly  new,  more  spacious  conno- 
tation. In  fact,  immortality  is  not  what  Wis- 
dom has  been  struggling  to  discover  at  all;  im- 
mortality, I  mean,  in  the  sense  of  soul  surviving 
body.  It  is  resurrection,  an  uprise  to  a  higher  stage 
and  standard  of  being.  This  is  what  rose  into 
view  when  the  fulness  of  manhood  came;  and 
this  is  not  a  postponed  thing,  an  eventual  survival 
of  material  decay,  but  a  present  access  and  exu- 
berance of  life,  so  free  and  overflowing,  and  made 
of  such  permanent  materials,  that  in  its  power 
death  is  abolished.  I  am  the  life,  He  said,  not 
am  going  to  have  it;  I  am  the  resurrection  and 
the  life.  So  in  such  teaching  the  disciples  were 
all  the  while  walking  in  the  scenery  of  immor- 
tality and  learning  its  idiom,  without  knowing  it; 
and  when,  on  that  last  evening,  they  raised  the 
question  where  the  Master  was  going,  He  spoke 
very  briefly  of  the  many  mansions  fitted  to  them, 
as  if  it  were  a  truth  that  they  had  known  all  along: 
"if  it  were  not  so,"  He  said,  "I  would  have  told 
you."1  Eternity,  long  pulsing  in  the  heart  and 

1  John  xiv,  2. 
321 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

making  it  beat  on  to  noble  works,  has  become  the 
natural  setting  of  true  life,  eternal  life  as  the  new 
idiom  familiarly  calls  it.  Such  is  the  completed 
answer  to  Ecclesiastes*  austere  agnosticism  re- 
garding the  future;  and  it  is  the  very  answer  in 
the  interest  of  which,  though  he  surmised  it  but 
dimly  if  at  all,  he  so  sturdily  rejected  the  idle 
dreams  and  speculations  of  his  too  shallow  age. 
He  was  in  the  true  succession  of  Wisdom;  had 
left  room,  so  to  say,  for  this  diffused  radiance  of 
immortal  light,  by  his  sane  principle  that  life 
must  be  a  character  and  not  a  dream.  The  most 
repressive  word  was  also  the  kindest. 

These  are  high  themes  to  bring  into  this  litera- 
ture of  Wisdom;  higher  or  deeper  cannot  be  con- 
ceived. But  it  was  necessary,  as  I  have  said,  in 
order  to  pick  up  the  dropped  and  broken  threads. 
Necessary,  too,  because  our  Wisdom  has  become 
a  veritable  philosophy,  with  a  cosmic  and  eternal 
setting;  has  come  in  sight  of  that  which  is,  and 
found  its  principle  of  growth  and  progress.  It  has 
got  beyond  its  self-returning  wheel  of  being,  which 
yields  no  residuum;  and  by  a  kind  of  laboratory 
method,  in  the  person  of  its  highest  representative, 
commits  itself  to  a  life  which  is  essentially  a  free- 
dom, a  venture,  a  spirit  of  love  and  faith.  Self- 
regard  has  passed  into  self-impartation;  and  this 

322 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

supreme  representative,  in  the  faith  that  God  is 
love  indeed,  and  love  creation's  final  law,  is  order- 
ing life  not  on  the  theory  of  getting  all  you  can,  as 
if  Wisdom  were  an  affair  of  enriching  yourself, 
nor  on  a  theory  of  fair  balance  between  work  and 
wage,  but,  so  to  say,  on  an  intrepid  impulse  of 
outgo  without  reference  to  income,  as  if  all  he 
were  here  for  were  to  lavish  his  wealth  of  person- 
ality on  the  world  and  let  that  philosophy  of  life 
work  as  it  will.  This,  in  his  presupposition,  is 
the  highest  expression  of  that  supreme  character 
which  the  Wisdom  of  men  has  been  dimly  seek- 
ing for  ages. 

in 

How  now  does  Wisdom  look,  as  projected  on  so 
vast  a  background  and  translated  into  such  revo- 
lutionary terms  ?  The  homely  body  of  mashals 
that  we  have  considered  has  concerned  itself  with 
personal  and  parish  affairs;  with  labor  and  every- 
day living  and  practical  management;  how,  then, 
can  these  activities  have  fruitful  relation  with  so 
tremendous  an  overflow  of  being?  Can  a  man, 
can  the  Son  of  man,  so  launch  his  faith  out  into 
the  ocean  of  personality,  and  still  remain  prudent, 
calculating,  cool-headed,  wise  in  his  generation  ? 
He  must  surely  compete  with  quite  another  atti- 
323 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

tude  of  wisdom,  and  either  outlast  or  go  under. 
For  practical  work  and  ways,  is  he  not  a  misfit  ? 

Well,  let  us  see  how  it  works  out  into  every-day 
terms.  We  have  seen  what  Wisdom  resolved  itself 
into,  as  the  sages  set  out  to  explore  it,  and  espe- 
cially as  Ecclesiastes  applied  it  to  the  affairs  of  a 
crooked  world.  With  him,  as  we  have  seen,  it  has 
become  a  quasi-philosophy  of  mastership,  manage- 
ment: how  so  to  manage  our  world,  with  its  com- 
plexities and  perplexities,  as  to  secure  the  most 
advantage,  or  profit,  all  round;  or  where  it  is  un- 
manageable, how  so  to  manage  or  bear  ourselves 
as  to  get  the  most  or  miss  the  least  out  of  the  situ- 
ation. I  am  trying  to  put  the  case  in  its  most  utili- 
tarian phase.  It  is  with  the  world  of  human  rela- 
tions that  Wisdom  has  mainly  to  deal.  With  God 
and  fate  the  way  is  a  plain  one  of  reverence  and 
manful  courage;  but  with  human  relations  our 
philosophy  complicates  itself  into  the  problem 
how  in  the  wisest  and  surest  way  to  manage  our 
fellow-men,  as  they  are  stationed  at  our  side  or 
over  us. 

Various  phases  of  useful  culture  have  been 
inculcated  and  exploited,  as  the  beginning  of  the 
Proverb-book  pointed  out.  Let  us  recall  the  com- 
pendious list:  wisdom,  instruction,  understand- 
ing, wise-dealing,  righteousness,  judgment,  equity, 

324 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

subtilty,  knowledge,  discretion,  sound  counsels;  a 
noble,  manly  catalogue:  all  having  that  practical 
end  in  view,  that  we  may  meet  and  match  our 
neighbor  and  our  gainsaying  world,  not  being 
worsted  or  shamed.  All  are  good  as  far  as  they  go. 
Yet  also  all  have  their  limits  of  efficiency;  for  all 
run  eventually  against  an  irreducible  residuum  of 
froward  resistance.  The  scorner  and  the  perverse 
and  the  fool  are  still  there;  and  the  strong  perse- 
cute the  weak;  and  there  are  wicked  to  whom  it 
befalleth  according  to  the  work  of  the  righteous; 
and  because  sentence  against  an  evil  work  is  not 
executed  speedily,  just  because  a  sinner  may  do 
evil  a  hundred  times  and  survive  it,  therefore  the 
heart  of  the  sons  of  men  within  them  is  full-set  to 
do  evil.  Your  wise  expedients,  your  subtilties  and 
sage  counsels,  seem  to  have  reached  the  point  of 
exhaustion,  and  yet  not  to  have  attained  their  end, 
in  large  and  prevailing  way.  Such  is  the  world  into 
which  Ecclesiastes  looks;  a  seemingly  intractable 
world,  which  to  all  our  wisdom  responds  only  far 
enough  to  let  us  live,  and  that  only  at  great  outlay 
of  labor  and  skill.  Even  where  justice  abounds, 
the  venom  of  selfish  wrong  and  base  cunning  and 
overreaching  may  yet  more  abound. 

One  expedient  remains,  like  the  last  thing  in 
the  Pandora  box.     Suppose  you  try  loving  your 

325 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

fellow-man.  Loving  him  —  loving  that  lawless, 
evil-hearted,  degraded  fellow?  Yes;  loving  him. 
You  surely  cannot  mean  it;  loving  him,  —  why, 
there  is  no  tinge  of  wisdom  or  management  in 
that;  that  is  simply  fatuous.  What  defence  have  I 
left,  if  I  do  ?  See  how  instantly  he  will  turn  upon 
my  guilelessness,  and  make  traffic  of  my  trust  in 
him,  and  take  his  easy  advantage,  and  indulge  his 
perverse  triumph  to  the  utmost.  Well,  what  if  he 
does  ?  But  what  more  complete  playing  into  his 
hands  could  there  be  ?  Why,  it  is  as  much  as  my 
life  is  worth,  to  say  nothing  of  my  common  sense, 
to  abandon  myself  thus  to  a  wild,  Quixotic  impulse 
of  sheer  good-will.  Well,  what  if  it  is  ?  But,  where 
do  /  come  in  ?  what  is  there  in  this  deal  for  me  ? 
For  you  ?  —  why,  what  are  you  looking  for  any- 
thing for  ?  Ah,  I  begin  to  see;  you  are  still  in  this 
wisdom  of  life  for  the  sake  of  returns,  are  you  ? 
You  must  still,  after  however  long  or  deep-laid 
circuit  of  wisdom,  come  back  to  Satan's  question 
of  net  proceeds,  must  you  ?  But  —  but — why,  this 
is  an  utter  reversal  of  tactics:  it  is  as  if  I,  who 
had  spent  life  and  study  fortifying  my  soul  against 
the  hardness  and  shrewdness  of  men,  constructing 
walls  and  earth-works  and  rifle-pits  and  subterra- 
nean mines,  should  all  of  a  sudden  throw  the  gates 
open  and  make  a  sortie  to  the  open  plain,  leaving 

326 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

everything  open  to  invasion.  Yes,  it  does  look  so, 
does  it  not  ?  And  that  is  exactly  what  it  amounts 
to.  It  is  the  complete  reversal  of  the  tidal  currents 
of  life,  the  outward  current  we  are  speaking  of, 
the  overflow  and  free  uprise  of  spirit,  as  set  in 
motion  in  the  heart  of  man.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  re- 
versal of  manhood  life  so  radical  that  Jesus  calls 
it  being  born  anew,  and  says  that  one  so  born  is 
as  free  and  as  inexplicable  to  worldly  estimates 
of  values  as  the  wind.  In  a  word,  the  hitherto  ac- 
cepted wisdom  of  life  is  working  in  just  the  oppo- 
site direction,  and  man  is  committed  to  the  issue 
of  a  deal  which  does  not  limit  itself  by  the  question 
of  value  received  at  all.  The  dependence  on  rules 
and  counsels  of  procedure  has  given  place  to  a 
self-moved  character  so  imbued  with  neighbor- 
love  and  so  set  on  neighbor-welfare  as  to  devise 
a  rule  of  action  and  wisdom  all  its  own. 

And  what  comes  of  it  ?  What  would  come  of  a 
life  so  original  and  initiative  ?  It  looks  inoffensive, 
but  it  is  revolutionary;  it  shows  too  bright  on  the 
background  of  men's  selfishness  to  make  its  way 
undisturbed,  or  to  remain  inoperative.  Men  must 
take  positions  with  reference  to  it;  for  or  against; 
and  their  positions  must  not  only  be  taken  deter- 
minately  but  emphasized.  "  The  wisdom  of  Plato 
had  already  seen  that  one  perfectly  just  could 

327 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

not  appear  amongst  the  senseless  and  the  wicked 
without  provoking  a  murderous  hatred."  And 
the  wisdom  of  St.  Paul  notes,  in  like  manner, 
that  a  similar  reception  was  given  to  the  One  per- 
fectly wise,  who  dared  to  push  his  Wisdom  of  God 
to  its  consequences.  It  was  a  stumbling-block  to 
the  Jews,  the  seekers  after  signs  of  truth,  and  to 
the  Greeks,  the  philosophical  successors  of  Plato, 
it  was  foolishness.  Obviously,  if  it  would  prevail 
among  men,  it  must  be  larger  and  more  vital  than 
the  immediate  occasion  or  the  superficial  effect; 
it  must  have  the  strength  to  outlast  and  the  faith 
to  go  on  till  it  accomplishes  some  larger  and  more 
far-reaching  result.  Such  must  be  the  marks  of 
the  Wisdom  of  God. 

So  here  we  must  sketch  a  little  history  of  the 
introduction  of  this  Wisdom.  When  the  fulness  of 
the  time  came,  one  man,  who  by  that  act  con- 
sciously presented  himself  for  the  world's  judg- 
ment as  Son  of  man,  that  is,  as  type  of  full  man- 
hood, committed  himself,  in  filial  faith  and  with  no 
shadow  of  reserve,  to  that  tide  of  Father-love  which 
from  the  unseen  sources  flows  through  the  universe; 
committed  himself  not  merely  by  accepting  such 
love  and  profiting  by  it,  which  was  passive  and 
easy,  but  by  exerting  it  consistently  in  conduct, 
which  is  quite  another  matter.  To  be  utterly  true 

328 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 
to  that  apprehended  love  of  God  and  to  make  it 
prevail  as  human  hands  and  brain  could  be  its 
vehicle,  this  was  the  single-minded  activity  to 
which  his  life  was  consecrated.  Such  consecration, 
mystic  and  fervid  as  it  was,  drew  to  a  practical 
aim  and  centre.  It  was  as  religious  as  was  the  life 
of  Job,  yet  at  the  same  time  as  wisely  set  on  the 
adaptation  of  means  to  ends  as  were  the  coun- 
sels of  Ecclesiastes.  The  problem  of  religion  is 
to  find  God.  The  problem  of  Wisdom  is  to  find 
men;  and  this  supreme  aim  is  what  makes  the 
life  of  Jesus  an  authentic  chapter  in  the  history 
of  purest  Wisdom. . 

In  so  doing,  not  blindly  but  as  knowing  what 
is  in  man,  he  deliberately  brought  upon  himself 
all  the  consequences,  immediate  and  remote,  of 
such  committal.  Was  this  determination  made 
in  weakness  or  in  strength,  in  fatuity  or  in  wis- 
dom ?  —  men  have  been  asking  ever  since,  and 
answering  according  to  what  was  in  them.  If  in 
wisdom,  there  certainly  was  in  that  wisdom  a 
controlling  element  more  than  worldly.  Professor 
Toy,  in  his  summary  of  the  character  qualities 
inculcated  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs*  mentions  as 
a  conspicuous  omission,  courage.  I  think  the 
omission  is  supplied  here,  in  a  courage  which 
expresses  itself  not  in  counsels  but  in  living 

329 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

consistency.  We  know  what  was  the  immedi- 
ate result  of  Jesus'  committal  to  the  life  of  love. 
They  did  to  him  even  as  worldly  wisdom  pre- 
dicted. They  took  mean  advantage,  they  lied 
about  him,  they  consulted  their  policies  and  expe- 
diencies to  get  rid  of  him,  they  clamored  against 
his  revolutionary  tendencies,  they  put  him  to  death. 
All  this  he  might  have  avoided;  our  old  accuser 
Satan  gave  him  the  chance  to  do  so,  and  to  get 
the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  in  the  bargain.  Such 
personality  as  his,  even  a  Satanic  eye  must  see, 
had  transcendent  powers  of  management  and 
leadership.  And  he  —  not  for  one  moment  did 
he  deflect  his  way,  or  stop  loving  his  fellow-men. 
The  fountain  of  his  love  remained  constant,  and 
with  his  last  breath  was  still  flowing,  as  it  were  an 
eternal  ordinance  of  nature.  And  this  indeed  is 
what  he  proved  it  to  be;  as  expressed  in  nature's 
highest  product,  the  fully  evolved  manhood.  We 
call  it  the  divine  acting  on  our  clay,  and  so  it  is; 
but  surely  it  acts  from  within;  it  is  no  less  accu- 
rately, in  concrete  historical  fact,  what  the  human 
is  capable  of  being. 

We  may  here  note  how  a  deep  student  of  inner 
history,  he  whom  we  call  St.  John,  has  inter- 
preted all  this,  as  compared  with  the  older  stand- 
ards of  living.  "The  law,"  he  says,  "was  given 

330 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

by  Moses;  but  grace  and  truth  came  by  Jesus 
Christ."  Grace  —  do  we  not  see  this  is  just  the 
thing  we  have  been  describing  ?  Grace  may  be 
defined  as  love  in  a  certain  supreme  aspect;  that 
is  to  say,  love  without  reference  to  returns,  love 
initiative,  exerted  not  because  its  object  is  lovely 
or  worthy,  or  has  done  anything  to  call  it  forth, 
but  because  the  real  nature  and  integrity  of  love 
is  originative,  an  overflow,  as  it  were  the  primal 
impulse  of  highest  character.  This,  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it,  is  a  true  definition;  the  only 
one  in  which  personality  attains  its  freest  and 
fullest  expression.  To  make  love  less  than  this 
is  to  make  it  an  echo  of  something  else,  or  as  de- 
pendent on  something  else.  But  in  all  the  universe, 
as  Jesus  believes  and  puts  it  into  life,  love  is  the 
supreme  uncreated  thing.  And  this  too,  as  St. 
John's  statement  intimates,  is  also  truth,  that 
rounded  integrity  and  consistency  which  best 
answers  to  man's  birth  and  ultimate  type.  Truth 
is  grace  loyal  to  itself,  grace  maintaining  itself 
as  the  mark  of  the  perfected  personality,  above 
whatsoever  loveth  and  maketh  a  lie,  be  it  wicked- 
ness or  mere  expediency  or  opportunism  or  any 
of  the  shifts  of  worldly  wisdom.  And  Jesus  is 
committed,  for  better  or  for  worse,  to  the  propo- 
sition that  such  supreme  truth  of  manhood  lies 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

not  in  merely  obeying  natural  or  moral  law,  but 
in  freely  imparting  itself. 

But  that  a  grace  so  yielding,  so  unexacting,  so 
unchanged  by  any  return  it  elicits  —  that  this 
should  be  wisdom,  as  it  were  an  applied  art  of 
love  ?  This  is  the  question  that  our  present  theme 
lays  upon  us. 

Well,  here  is  what  actually  took  place.  Where 
sin  abounded,  grace  did  much  more  abound;  was 
not  worn  out  by  frowardness,  but  outlasted  it  and 
remained  absolutely  intact,  a  new  power  in  the 
world.  And  the  men  who  put  Jesus  to  death, 
when  they  came  to  the  better  self  that  was  strug- 
gling for  its  rights  within  them,  began  to  respond 
to  it,  and  to  number  the  years  of  their  history 
from  his  birth,  and  to  realize  that  for  all  its 
Quixotic  abandon  it  was  an  immense  quickener 
of  highest  and  noblest  things.  In  the  long  run  it 
proved  itself,  after  all,  adapted  to  find  men  and 
win  them;  and  so  it  was  a  real  philosophy  of 
management,  the  only  infallible  one.  Say  what 
we  may,  that  grace  has  changed  the  tone  and  face 
of  the  world.  The  tides  of  our  civilization  and 
intelligence  and  dealing  with  men  have  been  try- 
ing ever  since,  though  so  haltingly  and  so  subject 
to  faithless  cross-currents,  to  conform  themselves 
to  the  mighty  current  of  it. 

332 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

And  as  for  the  law,  it  was  equally  the  fulfilling 
of  that;  so  that  the  law  of  our  being  got  itself 
observed,  in  spirit  and  essence,  as  never  before. 
In  fine,  this  grace,  which  did  not  pause  for  the 
cross,  turned  out  to  be  the  hidden  wisdom,  which 
none  of  the  princes  of  this  world  knew;  for  had 
they  known  it  they  would  not  have  crucified 
the  Lord  of  glory.  Or,  as  we  have  traced  it  from 
that  elemental  surplusage  and  overflow,  and  com- 
pared it  with  our  conception  of  the  divine,  it  has 
proved  itself  the  wisdom  of  God  and  the  power  of 
God.  The  Son  of  man  had  rejected  an  existing 
decrepit  dominion  in  order  to  create,  on  an  eternal 
scale,  a  new  and  living  one,  which  should  call 
forth  a  glad,  free  allegiance  of  hearts.  "I,"  he 
said,  "if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw 
all  men  unto  me."1  No  Promethean  remonstrance 
of  a  Job  against  a  felt  injustice  in  things,  or  of 
an  Ecclesiastes  against  a  splendid  but  empty 
dream  of  the  future,  can  compare  with  the  sub- 
lime courage  of  such  a  committal  as  this.  It  has 
the  authentic  stamp  of  the  heroic;  nay,  it  is  the 
actual  historic  realization  of  that  poet's  dream  of 
"music  sent  up  to  God,"  which  in  very  truth  is 

"The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too  hard, 
The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky." 

1  John  xii,  32. 

333 


HEBREW   LITERATURE    OF   WISDOM 

Jesus,  as  it  were,  improvises  the  theme,  which 
then  is  left  for  common  men,  workers  and  mar- 
tyrs, to  embody  in  daily  living. 

IV 

Yet  all  this  new  tide  of  living  wisdom,  radical 
and  revolutionary  though  it  was,  came  not  with 
observation.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  simpli- 
city and  familiarity  of  it.  In  the  fifteenth  year  of 
the  reign  of  Tiberius  Caesar,  a  young  man  left  his 
carpenter-shop  at  Nazareth,  and  coming  to  the 
Jordan  began  to  gather  young  men  about  him, 
fishers'  sons  and  publicans  and  common  folk, 
and  to  tell  them  his  thoughts  of  life.  That  these 
would  be  thoughts  well  worth  pondering  we  might 
be  sure  before  we  heard  him;  for  we  have  just 
been  behind  the  scenes  and  know  the  marvellous 
principle  of  life  to  which  he  is  committed.  In  fact, 
a  whole  world  philosophy  lies  wrapped  up  in  the 
situation;  which,  however,  we  must  leave  aside, 
while  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  current  of  prac- 
tical wisdom  that  flowed  through  his  words. 
"How  knoweth  this  man  letters,  having  never 
learned?"  people  began  to  ask  regarding  him; 
and  there  was  an  authority  in  his  teaching,  the 
authority  of  perfect  sanity  and  sound  sense,  which 
everywhere  excited  wonder. 

334 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

Of  the  form  of  his  teaching,  which  was  as 
wisely  adapted  to  men  as  the  substance,  we  have 
space  for  only  a  brief  description.  It  was  not  writ- 
ten wisdom,  with  its  literary  refinements  and  pos- 
turings;  it  was  not  declamatory  and  oratorical;  nor 
was  it  chiseled  and  filed  into  the  artistic  apho- 
rism of  the  early  mashal.  To  put  his  utterances 
into  parallelisms,  as  some  affect  to  do  nowadays, 
as  if  they  were  a  kind  of  poetry,  is,  I  think,  to 
import  into  them  a  feeling  of  remoteness  and  fin- 
ish which  they  were  not  intended  to  bear,  how- 
ever our  meditation  may  derive  this  quality  from 
them.  No  more  were  they  in  the  academic  and 
erudite  tone  so  affected  by  the  scribes,  a  quality 
that  doubtless  did  much  to  rob  their  words  of  that 
kind  of  impact  and  thrust  which  carries  authority. 
His  teaching  had,  in  fact,  risen  beyond  the  half- 
way point  where  its  art  sticks  out  and  obtrudes 
itself  as  art,  and  by  making  men  forget  all  this, 
demonstrated  all  the  more  truly  its  transcendent 
artistry.  It  was  conversational,  familiar,  idiomatic, 
drawing  its  figures  and  analogies  from  the  com- 
monest things,  yet  by  the  inner  value  of  the  sub- 
ject rising  to  a  quiet  assurance  of  grandeur. 

To  the  disciples,  who  were  constantly  with  him, 
he  presented  the  truth  more  literally  and  in  closer 
words.  They  could  make  the  connections  and 

335 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

coordinations  with  his  other  utterances ;  could 
better  resolve  a  partial  view  or  a  half-truth,  hav- 
ing the  larger  body  of  doctrine  to  refer  it  to.  To 
the  floating  multitude,  some  of  whom  may  never 
have  heard  him  before,  and  many  of  whom  may 
have  had  to  depend  for  their  instruction  on  that 
one  hearing,  he  spoke  largely  in  parables.  By  this 
means  he  showed  a  divine  sense  of  fitness  both  to 
subject  and  audience.  Thus  there  were  the  liter- 
ary forms  which  would  deepen  thought  in  those 
whose  thoughts  were  already  germinating  and  ex- 
panding; and  there  were  the  forms  which  would 
awaken  and  stimulate  thought  in  those  whose 
ideas  hitherto  had  been  heedless  or  uncentred. 
Both  classes  received  their  proper  food. 

"For  Wisdom  dealt  with  mortal  powers, 
Where  truth  in  closest  words  shall  fail, 
When  truth  embodied  in  a  tale 
Shall  enter  in  at  lowly  doors."  1 

For  the  rest,  his  parables,  which  were  a  conversa- 
tional expansion  of  the  illustrative  mashal,  like  a 
detailed  simile,  were  not  only  admirably  adapted 
to  "enter  in  at  lowly  doors;"  they  were  designed 
also,  as  he  intimated,  to  be  a  kind  of  combination 
lock,  which  they  must  have  the  right  spiritual 
combination  to  open;  innocuous  and  stimulative, 
even  if  not  fully  fathomed,  and  increasing  in  sig- 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  xxxvi. 
336 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

nificance,  beauty,  and  wisdom,  the  farther  and 
more  sympathetically  they  were  explored.  Of  un- 
told value  to  those  in  whose  hearts  they  were 
lodged  as  seed  thoughts,  to  the  shallow  and  worldly 
they  could  speak  warningly,  as  did  Browning  of 
his  privately  guarded  House:  — 

"Outside  should  suffice  for  evidence: 

And  whoso  desires  to  penetrate 
Deeper,  must  dive  by  the  spirit  sense  — 
No  optics  like  yours,  at  any  rate!  " 1 

The  parables  can  be  explored;  but  they  cannot 
be  profaned. 

For  the  substance  of  his  Wisdom,  we  must 
need  content  ourselves,  in  so  infinitely  rich  a 
field,  with  a  few  broad  vistas  and  directions.  It 
is  just  the  consistent  tissue  of  the  wisdom  whose 
supreme  pulsation  is  love:  the  wisdom  which, 
putting  utter  faith  in  the  power  of  love,  will  by 
love  find  the  hearts  of  men,  or,  failing  this,  will 
still  live  in  its  stedfast  character  of  love,  and  bear 
witness  to  it  through  all  storms  of  opposition, 
indifference,  hatred,  contempt,  never  ceasing  to 
love  even  for  death.  It  is  thus  the  epitome  of  His 
own  nature  which  He  would  impress  upon  men; 
He  is  working  His  own  life  out  into  precept  and 
parable. 

His  body  of  precept,  the  more  esoteric  coun- 

1  Browning,  House. 

337 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

sel  which  He  gives  to  His  disciples,  is  directed  in 
its  most  distinctive  ways  to  getting  an  initiative 
started,  a  venture  of  love,  in  the  heart  and  conduct 
of  man.  He  approaches  this  idea  in  a  naive, 
homely  way,  trying  to  make  men  ignore  their  old 
commercial  impulses  and  take  pride  and  joy  in 
doing  something  over,  something  that  they  are 
not  paid  for,  something  which  can  be  put  to  the 
credit  of  the  free-moving  spirit.  "  If  ye  do  good 
to  them  which  do  good  to  you,  what  thank  have 
ye  P"1  Sinners,  he  says,  do  as  much  as  that;  sin- 
ners love  those  who  love  them.  To  go  so  far  and 
no  farther,  in  your  outflow  of  life,  is  just  to  bal- 
ance things  up  accurately:  action  and  reaction, 
favor  and  reward,  love  answering  to  love,  and 
perhaps  hate  to  hate.  But  there  is  no  "thank"  in 
living  that  way,  none  of  the  blessedness  of  free 
giving,  nothing  more  than  is  paid  for.  Life  is 
at  a  deadlock  so  far  as  spiritual  progress  is  con- 
cerned if  it  gets  no  farther  than  that.  We  see 
how  this  attacks  the  inveterate  old  idea  of  doing 
good  and  getting  a  reward  for  it,  and  how  it  cor- 
rects this  idea  by  the  simple  idea  of  overflow. 
Long  enough  have  men  echoed  each  other,  doing 
as  they  were  done  by,  and  measuring  out  their 
treatment  of  each  other  by  the  treatment  they 

1  Luke  vi,  33. 
338 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

received.  Long  enough  have  they  been  in  the 
world  like  children  and  slaves,  obeying  law  be- 
cause they  must  obey,  and  only  as  far  as  they 
must;  long  enough  have  they  been  passive  in- 
struments of  His  sovereign  power,  the  puppets 
and  culprits  of  God.  It  is  time  now  to  be  His 
sons,  reproducing  the  family  traits  and  likeness; 
to  be  to  the  world  each  one  an  individual  pul- 
sation of  God,  perfect  in  human  degree  as  He  in 
His.  And  the  divine  trait  that  Jesus  selects  for 
emulation  is  just  that  love  which,  without  respect 
of  persons,  works  equal  good  to  all;  which  sends 
rain  and  sunshine  on  evil  and  good,  on  just  and 
unjust,  alike.  There  is  the  pattern.  It  is  not  the 
worthiness  of  the  object  that  is  to  determine  a 
true  man's  conduct:  not  what  he  is  to  get,  not 
even  the  gratitude  or  appreciation  he  is  to  get,  for 
being  good  or  loving.  All  this  would  make  him 
only  an  echo  of  another,  helpless  and  dependent; 
incapable  of  having  good-will  until  the  other  has 
good-will  too;  and  there  is  no  "thank"  in  that, 
it  is  still  on  the  same  old  plane  of  barter  and 
exchange.  No:  it  is  rather  the  overflow,  the  self- 
moved  initiative,  of  the  character  that  is  full  formed 
within  us.  This  determines  Christ's  new  principle 
of  action  and  wisdom,  and  this  is  what  an  apostle 
calls  the  law  of  the  spirit  of  life. 

339 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

It  is  when  our  Lord  is  setting  forth  this  idea  in 
all  its  startling  absoluteness  that  his  words  sound 
most  like  half-truths.  We  may  fairly  say  they  had 
to  come  as  half-truths,  they  were  so  new  and 
strange  to  the  natural  heart  of  man.  They  are 
strange  still  until  they  are  interpreted  in  the  spirit. 
They  seem,  in  some  aspects,  like  an  utter  collapse 
of  weakness,  while  in  fact  they  are  the  summit 
of  integrity  and  strength.  There  is,  for  instance, 
that  seemingly  Quixotic  group  of  precepts,  to  turn 
the  other  cheek  to  your  smiter,  to  go  two  miles 
with  him  who  compels  you  to  go  one,  and  to  give 
your  coat  also  to  him  who  takes  your  cloak.  Men 
read  this  in  their  worldly  light  as  if  it  were  a 
cowardly  non-resistance;  as  if  the  Christian  were 
expected  to  be  a  weakling,  everlastingly  giving  up 
and  knuckling  under.  And  men  pride  themselves 
on  the  greater  strength  which  is  ready  to  give  as 
good  as  it  gets;  they  say  you  cannot  preserve  your 
practical  position  or  your  self-respect  by  letting 
yourself  be  so  run  over.  And  if  they  will  stop  to 
think  what  this  means,  they  will  find  that  they 
themselves  are  the  weaklings.  "It  is  true,"  says 
Mr.  Chesterton,  "  that  we  cannot  turn  the  cheek 
to  the  smiter,  and  the  sole  and  sufficient  reason 
is  that  we  have  not  the  pluck." 1  Is  it  weakness, 

1  Chesterton,  Varied  Types,  p.  134. 

340 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

is  it  cowardice,  to  have  such  stamina  and  solid 
constancy  of  character  that  nothing  can  make  you 
a  mere  echo,  to  smite  or  use  compulsion  or  extort, 
or  on  the  other  hand  to  love  and  do  good  just 
as  some  one  else  sets  the  copy  ?  Must  you  go 
through  life  able  to  do  nothing  but  retaliate? 
Why,  then,  your  character,  your  individuality,  is 
unformed;  you  are  at  the  mercy  of  your  envi- 
ronment. On  the  other  hand,  your  ability  to 
turn  the  other  cheek  means  that  after  the  smit- 
ing and  injustice  you  remain  the  same  man  you 
were  before:  freely  determining  what  you  do,  go- 
ing the  second  mile  and  giving  the  coat,  because 
such  good-will  remains  as  truly  in  you  as  it  ever 
was.  Such  is  the  character  that  survives;  it  is 
elemental;  evil  environment  cannot  kill  or  impair 
it.  It  works  as  consistently  on  the  small  scale  as 
on  the  large.  A  half-truth  this  is,  indeed;  but 
the  other  half,  supplied  by  the  spirit  of  love,  foots 
back  to  that  new  self-effacing  wisdom  which 
through  this  young  man  of  Nazareth  is  feeling  for 
a  foundation  here  in  the  world. 

Of  the  same  character  are  those  precepts  wherein 
our  Lord  stimulates  men,  appealing  to  their  pride 
and  generosity,  to  go  beyond  the  Golden  Rule. 
To  do  to  others  as  you  would  that  others  should 
do  to  you  is  a  noble  principle;  no  justice  could 

34i 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

demand  a  nobler.  And  yet  there  is  in  it,  as  there  is 
in  justice  itself,  a  note  of  limitation.  It  is  good 
deeds  put  forth  in  faith,  and  it  sets  a  generous 
copy  of  what  it  would  elicit  in  return;  but  still  its 
eye  is  on  the  return;  it  does  its  good  on  the  recip- 
rocating plan.  Now,  noble  as  this  is,  our  Lord,  by 
the  grand  ideal  of  his  own  life,  and  by  the  inner 
principle  that  he  would  have  his  disciples  live 
by,  took  the  further  step  of  doing  good  and  lov- 
ing without  limitation.  We  speak  of  loving  our 
neighbor  as  ourself;  and  while  this  is  the  noble 
ideal  of  the  law,  the  old  ideal,  some  have  held  that 
the  Christian  addition  to  this  calls  us  to  love  our 
neighbor  better  than  ourself.  No :  that  is  not  how 

O 

Jesus  read  it.  Rather,  love  your  neighbor  without 
reference  to  yourself  at  all;  love  him  with  no  stand- 
ard, or  limit,  smaller  or  larger,  short  of  the  all- 
creative  love  of  God.  We  have  seen  how,  in  the 
practical  treatment  of  the  neighbor  at  our  side,  he 
would  stimulate  men  to  do  something  which  sin- 
ners could  not  do  just  as  well,  something  more 
than  they  are  paid  for  or  expect  pay  for.  And 
on  the  top  of  this  precept,  which  amounts  to  a 
criticism  of  the  Golden  Rule,  he  goes  on  till  he 
arrives  at  this  :  Love  your  enemies ;  do  good  to 
them  that  hate  and  persecute  you.  This  it  is, 
nothing  short  of  this,  to  be  not  like  sinners,  who 

342 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

helplessly  take  their  standard  and  occasion  from 
each  other,  but  like  God,  whose  sun  rises  every 
morning  on  just  and  unjust,  who  with  undimin- 
ished  beneficence,  whatever  evil  or  indifference 
He  shines  upon,  "makes  Himself  an  awful  rose 
of  dawn,  unheeded." 

It  has  always  seemed  to  the  world  that  we  are 
in  rarefied  air  here;  and  we  are.  Is  it  too  high 
and  rarefied  to  be  practical,  to  be  wisdom  ?  Well, 
we  have  the  every-day  life  of  Jesus  to  answer  that. 
He  knew  that  he  was  going  far,  nay,  to  the  utter- 
most; but  it  was  all  consciously  dedicated  to  the 
proposition  that  such  self-effacing  love  is  practical 
wisdom.  And  while  he  gives  men  the  Golden  Rule 
as  a  solid  landing-stage  on  the  way  thereto, — 
the  highest  indeed  that  can  justly  be  commanded, 
—  standing  on  the  farther  side,  and  on  the  heights 
above  it,  he  asks  men  almost  wistfully  if  they  also 
can  drink  his  cup  and  be  baptized  with  his  baptism. 
The  ultimate  Wisdom,  to  which  he  was  committed, 
is  a  thing  beyond  laws,  rules,  commandments;  it 
is  the  pulsation  of  the  free,  enlightened  spirit. 

We  can  see  now  how  truly  this  is  a  reversal  of 
the  currents  of  life.  By  it  manhood,  hitherto 
passive,  acted  upon,  has  become  active,  initiative; 
the  current  is  outward,  not  inward  flowing.  And 
in  becoming  such,  it  has  become  identified  with 
343 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

the  Source  of  all  wisdom  and  power,  with  the  crea- 
tive upbuilding  tide  of  the  universe;  having  His 
cause  at  heart,  and  vibrating  in  the  chord  of  His 
will.  And  so  it  has  risen  above  the  animal,  which 
is  an  embodied  hunger,  seeking  its  meat  from  God; 
above  the  worldling,  who  is  an  embodied  craving, 
seeking  his  wage  and  meed  among  material  and 
present  things;  to  the  summit  where,  as  a  leaven- 
ing influence  among  men,  it  is  making  love  and 
righteousness  prevail,  a  positive,  working,  crea- 
tive superabundance  of  power.  It  is  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra's  vision  made  actual:  — 

"Rejoice  we  are  allied 

To  that  which  doth  provide 
And  not  partake,  effect  and  not  receive! 
A  spark  disturbs  our  clod; 
Nearer  we  hold  of  God 
Who  gives,  than  of  His  tribes  that  take,  I  must  believe!"  ' 

As  men  reflect  such  ideal,  they  are  centres  of  a 
hidden  wisdom;  they  are,  according  to  Christ's 
familiar  figures,  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the  light  of 
the  world. 

So  much  for  his  more  inward  and  what  I  call 
esoteric  precept,  which  he  gives  to  his  intimate 
followers.  The  parables  enter  a  field  more  like 
what  men  have  hitherto  occupied;  the  field  where 
our  work  and  livelihood  must  come  in  close  touch 

1  Browning,  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  v. 

344 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

with  affairs.  He  has  not  forgotten  the  needs  of 
this  sphere,  and  his  words  ray  light  into  it,  as 
into  every  sphere;  though  not  so  much  by  way 
of  rules  and  working  aphorisms;  rather  by  putting 
into  the  place  of  these  a  self-moved  character 
which  makes  its  own  rules,  and  by  launching  all 
on  the  new  tide  of  things.  He  shuns  not  to  bid 
his  disciples  be  wise  as  serpents,  even  while  in 
all  their  activities  they  are  to  be  as  harmless  as 
doves. 

So  he  is  by  no  means  afraid  of  using  what 
is  usable  in  the  older  and  more  self-regarding 
standards  of  men.  Like  the  law,  these  are  not  to 
pass  away  until  all  that  is  good  in  them  is  secured. 
A  good  instance  of  this  is  the  parable  of  the  Un- 
just Steward.1  Let  us  not  miss  the  lesson  of  this 
parable  by  the  fact  that  in  it  the  unjust  remains 
unjust  still;  for  honesty  and  dishonesty  are  not 
its  issue.  The  point  is  that  even  a  worldly  schem- 
ing man  may  have  the  good  trait  of  looking  out 
for  the  future  by  making  friends  and  helpers, 
even  though  it  be  friends  with  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness.  The  unrighteous  mammon,  be- 
cause it  exists,  has  a  utility,  a  turn  to  serve;  it 
may  better  be  for  us  than  against  us,  quite  apart 
from  our  being  smirched  by  it;  it  is  our  drill- 

1  Luke  xvi,  1-13. 

345 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

ground  and  opportunity,  an  arena  wherein  to 
develop  trustiness  for  the  care  of  the  true  riches. 
It  need  not  warp  the  new  man  from  his  truer 
orbit  to  know  that  such  shrewd  foresight  may  be 
coupled  with  faithlessness.  Planning  for  future 
emergencies  can  just  as  well  form  other  and  right- 
eous combinations;  and  in  this  kind  of  foresight 
the  children  of  this  world  are  wiser  than,  or  as  we 
familiarly  express  it,  can  give  pointers  to,  the 
children  of  light.  We  know  how  men  conciliate 
each  other  in  the  way  of  business;  how,  for  the 
sake  of  enhancing  their  gains,  they  go  through  all 
the  motions  of  neighborly  good-will.  Well,  this 
parable  is  founded  on  that  trait  of  business  tactics, 
and  works  to  make  it  not  mere  part-acting  but 
genuine. 

Other  parables  there  are,  too,  which  bring  us 
close  to  practical  affairs  of  work  and  business; 
yet  which,  as  soon  as  we  have  the  Christ  com- 
bination to  unlock  them,  open  to  us  all  the  riches 
of  the  spirit.  The  parable  of  the  Talents,1  for 
instance,  interprets  life  by  entering  the  field  of 
commercial  enterprise;  it  defines  life  in  terms  of 
trade.  The  spirit  on  which  it  sets  its  approval 
is  the  spirit  of  faith,  which  ventures,  which  em- 
barks energies  and  capacities  on  an  issue  as  yet 

1  Matthew  xxv,  14-30. 
346 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

uncertain;  has  faith,  so  to  say,  that  there  is  a 
reward  and  blessedness  in  the  universe,  to  answer 
to  all  that  we  lay  out  upon  it.  The  kingdom  of 
heaven,  our  Lord  says,  is  like  that;  it  has,  so  to 
say,  a  soul  that  responds  to  just  that  impulse  in 
man  which  seeks  gain  and  merit  and  reward; 
and  the  spirit  which  man  brings  to  his  side  of  the 
case  is  the  spirit  of  wise,  honest,  faithful  steward- 
ship of  a  property  which  is  both  God's  and  our 
own.  This  statement  of  the  case  puts  all  our 
possessions,  material  as  well  as  spiritual,  in  their 
true  place  and  relation;  get  the  spirit  right  once, 
and  the  rest  follows;  but  the  point  is  that  instead 
of  inveighing  against  the  business  of  accumu- 
lating wealth,  as  it  is  so  easy  to  do,  Jesus  uses 
that  very  business  as  a  definition  and  illustration 
of  the  highest  life  a  man  can  live.  Not  to  have 
such  faith  as  expresses  itself  in  business  ven- 
tures is  to  abjure  a  wholesome  impulse  of  man- 
hood. This  is  seen  in  the  contrast  of  the  parable, 
the  man  of  one  talent;  who  is  condemned  not 
for  his  small  endowment,  but  for  his  refusal  to 
avail  himself  of  what  his  universe  is  ready  even 
on  the  lowest  terms  to  yield.  To  him  corporations 
have  no  souls;  capital  is  a  selfish,  austere  thing, 
reaping  where  it  has  not  sown,  and  gathering 
where  it  has  not  strewed.  His  relation  to  the  king- 

347 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

dom  is  not  that  of  soul  and  faith  and  stewardship; 
his  spirit  does  not  lay  hold  of  his  world,  but 
dwells  shut  up  in  its  own  selfish  interests.  But 
even  so,  a  lower  outlet  to  life  is  in  measure  pro- 
vided. Suppose  the  universe  in  which  your  lot 
is  laid  were  hard  and  soulless.  It  has  other  ways 
of  responding  to  you.  If  you  cannot  let  your  soul 
meet  the  soul  of  enterprise  and  growing  wealth, 
in  the  energetic  terms  of  work  and  faith,  you 
could  at  least  be  a  passive  investor,  could  let 
money  breed  interest,  for  so  it  may  be  appointed 
to  just  such  as  you.  To  live  on  the  interest  of  your 
money,  or  by  the  occupation  of  owning  real  estate, 
is  not  the  highest  calling  in  life;  it  requires  only 
one  talent  to  do  that.  But  if  you  have  so  little 
stir  of  faith  in  your  world  as  to  hide  even  that 
talent,  —  well,  your  fitting  place  is  evidently  some- 
where out  of  the  world. 

One  more  instance,  the  parable  of  the  Laborers 
in  the  Vineyard,1  lets  in  a  beam  of  the  newer  wis- 
dom to  what  is  called  the  labor  problem.  Things 
are  strangely  reversed  in  this  parable:  on  the  one 
side,  laborers  going  into  their  life's  work,  whether 
through  the  hours  of  heat  and  burden  or  at  the 
last  hour  of  the  afternoon,  because  they  want  to 
work,  and  with  a  faith  in  their  employer  which 

1  Matthew  xx,  1-16. 
348 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

does  not  stipulate  wages  but  simply  accepts  the 
promise  of  "whatsoever  is  right;"  on  the  other 
side,  an  employer  apparently  quite  careless  of  his 
fund  for  running  the  business,  less  concerned  to 
get  work  done  than  to  get  men  to  do  it,  and  giving 
equal  wages  for  short  hours.  There  is  an  audacity 
of  conception  about  the  whole  matter  which  some- 
how rouses  admiration.  As  was  said  of  the  charge 
at  Balaclava,  "It  is  magnificent,  but  it  is  not  war;" 
so  here  we  say,  It  is  magnificent,  but  it  is  not  busi- 
ness. But  when,  after  a  little,  our  thoughts  settle 
and  run  clear,  we  begin  to  ask  ourselves:  So 
much  the  worse  for  it,  or  so  much  the  worse  for 
business  ?  After  all,  must  business,  employment, 
work  and  wage,  needs  be  like  war  ?  And  when  we 
realize  that  in  the  supreme  employment  bureau 
of  the  universe  the  proprietor  is  running  his  busi- 
ness on  a  plan  quite  other  than  the  amount  of 
work,  that  is,  the  number  of  hours,  that  He  can 
get  out  of  his  workingmen;  and  that  He  opens 
to  men  a  chance  to  work  on  a  plan  quite  other 
than  the  amount  of  pay  they  can  get  out  of  Him,  — 
well,  somehow  a  higher  equilibrium  seems  to  have 
been  established.  We  experience  a  real  stimulus 
and  uplift  of  character  from  the  thought  that  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  that,  and  that  our 
deeper  and  central  life  may  be  shaped  to  such 

349 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

a  scheme  of  things,  whether  the  temporal  firm 
for  which  we  work  and  the  union  to  which  we 
belong  can  be  like  it  or  not.  It  opens  the  soul 
to  larger  things,  to  a  permanent  order.  There  is 
surely  wisdom  here,  the  hidden  wisdom,  which 
none  of  the  princes  and  capitalists  of  this  world 
knew. 

This  last  cited  parable,  we  will  remember,  was 
called  forth  by  that  perennial  question  of  reward. 
We  may  be  sure  that  would  sooner  or  later  come 
to  the  surface;  and  indeed  its  relation  to  the  Wis- 
dom of  God  calls  for  clear  adjustment.  Our  Lord 
had  been  describing  how  hard  it  was  for  a  rich 
man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom;  and  Peter  had 
thereupon  responded,  "  Behold,  we  have  forsaken 
all,  and  followed  thee;  what  shall  we  have  there- 
fore ?"  The  answer  to  this  question,  put  into  the 
idiom  that  Peter  could  understand,  the  idiom  of 
his  inquiry,  was,  "Verily  I  say  unto  you,  that  ye 
which  have  followed  me,  in  the  regeneration  when 
the  Son  of  man  shall  sit  in  the  throne  of  his  glory, 
ye  also  shall  sit  upon  twelve  thrones,  judging  the 
twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  And  every  one  that  hath 
forsaken  houses,  or  brethren,  or  sisters,  or  father, 
or  mother,  or  wife,  or  children,  or  lands,  for  my 
name's  sake,  shall  receive  an  hundredfold  —  yes, 
and  the  blessedness  of  persecutions  extra  —  and 

350 


THE  WISDOM  OF  GOD 

shall  inherit  everlasting  life."  '  But,  He  goes  on 
virtually  to  say,  there  are  rewards  and  rewards. 
The  reward  of  exerting  positive  beneficent  power 
and  of  judging  life  as  it  most  divinely  is,  is  just 
as  real  as  the  reward  of  earning  a  fortune  or 
drawing  a  salary;  and  this  is  what  you  may 
surely  count  upon.  This  is  the  grand  reversal  of 
values  to  which  you  must  adjust  your  life.  And 
then  He  gives  the  parable  of  the  Laborers  in  the 
Vineyard  to  illustrate  in  what  way  the  first  shall 
be  last  and  the  last  first.  Ruskin  caught  the  inner 
principle  of  it  and  tried  to  infuse  something  of 
its  spirit  into  political  economy  by  writing  a  book 
entitled  "Unto  this  Last,"  and  founding  his  idea 
of  practical  life  upon  it  -  "I  will  give  unto  this 
last  even  as  unto  thee."  It  is  our  Lord's  pro- 
founder  ratification  of  what  Ecclesiastes  had 
already  recognized:  that  the  life  itself,  with  all 
its  renunciations  and  acquisitions,  is  its  own  re- 
ward; that  life,  the  ultimate  fact,  with  its  own  eter- 
nal values,  cannot  be  exchanged  for  anything 
else.  When  Ecclesiastes  made  that  discovery,  it 
was  made  to  stay.  But  with  our  Lord  life  was 
committed  to  the  overflowing  current  of  grace  and 
truth;  its  wisdom  was  the  tactful  and  winning 
wisdom  of  love  and  the  patient  wisdom  of  faith; 

1  Mark  x,  29,  30. 
351 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

and  its  reward  was  the  far  reward  of  seeing  His 
faith  prevail  and  the  needy  earth  enriched  with 
the  wealth  of  responsive  souls.  That  made  the 
difference. 

When  prophecy  spoke  its  final  word,  in  the  per- 
son of  John  the  Baptist,  there  was  an  estranging 
feature  about  the  man  and  the  message  which  com- 
pelled men  to  take  his  word,  if  they  accepted  it  at 
all,  in  the  congenial  spirit  of  it,  and  in  faith.  "  If 
ye  will  receive  it,"  said  our  Lord  of  him,  "this  is 
Elijah,  which  was  for  to  come."  It  was  truly  ful- 
filled when  it  was  fulfilled  within.  When  the  law 
received  restatement  at  our  Lord's  hands,  it  be- 
came a  new  and  vital  thing,  positive  instead  of 
negative,  its  "Thou  shalt  not  harm"  reversed  to 
"Thou  shalt  love;"  and  in  this  restatement  all 
the  burden  and  bondage  of  law  disappeared  in 
fulfilment,  glorified  into  the  divine  law  of  universal 
being.  Of  wisdom  too,  as  of  these  others,  when  it 
came  in  the  self-evidencing  authority  of  Jesus  and 
not  as  the  scribes,  we  may  say,  If  ye  will  receive  it, 
this  is  the  hidden  wisdom,  the  Wisdom  of  God. 
But  now  as  always  there  is  the  second  and  estrang- 
ing element,  the  receiving  of  it,  to  be  reckoned 
with.  "  Can  ye  drink  of  my  cup,  —  and  be  bap- 
tized with  my  baptism  ?"  Its  first  great  effect  was 

352 


THE   WISDOM   OF   GOD 

to  cause  a  whole  nation  to  stumble,  because  they 
could  not  discern  in  it  the  signs  of  workableness 
and  prosperity.  And  to  those  who  were  wise  in 
their  own  eyes,  or  by  the  calculable  and  reason- 
able standard,  is  has  seemed  foolishness.  The 
spirit  to  receive  it  must  be  a  venturing  spirit, 
reaching  beyond  effects  that  can  be  seen  or  that 
are  immediate,  toward  an  event  which  it  takes 
an  eternal  future  to  complete.  It  must  be  a  con- 
structive spirit,  putting  faith  in  the  most  un- 
promising human  nature  for  the  sake  of  what  it 
may  become.  It  must  be  a  courageous  spirit, 
committing  itself  to  what  the  acceptance  of  wis- 
dom costs,  as  well  as  to  what  it  comes  to.  It  cost 
Jesus  His  life.  But  that  same  life,  risen  again  and 
infused  as  a  supreme  spirit  of  wisdom  into  the 
hearts  of  men,  is  the  one  hope,  the  one  health,  and 
salvation  of  the  world.  Nor  this  merely  in  the 
devotional  and  sacred  currents  of  living.  As 
the  ages  go  on  they  will  see  more  clearly,  as 
they  are  so  slowly  beginning  to  see,  that  men's 
cleverest  and  most  sagacious  enterprises,  their 
business  affairs,  their  civilizations,  their  hope  of 
bettering  conditions  of  mankind,  cannot  emancipate 
themselves  from  a  virtual  treadmill  of  existence, 
with  its  gyrating  cycles  of  surmise  and  experiment 
and  error,  into  real  manhood  progress,  except 

353 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

by  this  selfsame  vitality  of  love  and  faith.  It  will 
take  men  a  good  while  to  learn  that  this  Wisdom 
of  God  is  a  practical,  workable  wisdom,  in  such 
wise  as  to  build  the  idea  into  the  sturdy  truth  of 
manhood;  but  it  is  worth  all  the  enthusiasm  and 
sacrifice  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  wrought  into  it, 
for  it  is  the  permanent  hope  of  the  world. 


354 


VIII 
AS   BETWEEN   BROTHERS 


THE  LIGHT  TEMPERED  TO  COMMON  EYES 

I.   The  brother  of  the  Lord  as  brother  of  men. 
II.   The  new  patent  of  nobility. 
III.   Summary  of  the  Wisdom  which  is  from  above. 


VIII 

AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

IN  the  general  growth  of  the  Wisdom  litera- 
ture, fundamentally  the  literature  of  common 
sense  in  an  uncommon  degree,  we  have  to 
take  note  of  a  tendency  against  which  it  had  con- 
tinually to  strive:  the  tendency,  namely,  to  run 
ahead  of  men's  every-day  ideas  and  interests,  and 
get  into  an  ethereal  region  above  the  brown  earth, 
where  the  mind  of  the  plain  man  cannot  easily 
feel  at  home.  I  do  not  name  this  as  by  any  means 
an  evil  tendency;  nor  does  the  movement  against 
it  connote  any  attitude  of  hostility  or  disparage- 
ment. Rather  it  was  felt  as  a  tendency  requiring 
correction  and  caution;  and  so,  along  with  the  im- 
pulse of  Wisdom  to  soar  there  always  coexisted 
a  wholesome  effort  to  keep  its  high  involvements 
in  such  plain  sight,  and  so  clearly  identified  with 
men's  straight  instincts,  that  the  rank  and  file,  for 
whom  Wisdom  primarily  existed,  could  at  every 
step  use  and  understand  it. 

A  mere  touch  of  review  will  show  what  I  mean. 
As  soon,  we  will  remember,  as  men's  enthusi- 
asm and  imagination  became  enlisted  in  the  con- 

357 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

templation  of  Wisdom,  as  we  see  in  the  editorial 
section  of  Proverbs,  Wisdom  assumed  a  radiant 
guise  of  personification,  like  a  kind  of  goddess, 
sporting  in  the  heavenly  courts  and  having  her 
delights  with  the  sons  of  men.  This  was  all  well 
enough,  so  long  as  the  bounds  of  the  figurative 
and  the  literal  were  kept  clearly  discerned.  But  we 
recall  how  at  about  this  juncture,  whatever  his  spe- 
cific occasion,  the  staunch  old  Philistine  Agur  felt 
called  upon  to  insinuate  a  kind  of  makeweight 
hint,  a  gentle  caution  against  too  adventurous 
speculation  on  the  divine  nature,  and  too  super- 
fine fancies  about  poverty  and  riches.  His  words 
read,  in  effect,  like  the  plain  man's  protest  against 
making  the  wisdom  of  life  a  merely  learned  and 
literary  thing,  remote  and  unpractical,  and  thus 
missing  the  grip  it  ought  to  have  on  unlettered 
men's  interests.  This  gentle  reaction  of  Agur's 
was  much  like  what,  on  a  larger  scale,  sanity 
and  sound  sense  was  moved  to  administer  at 
the  great  crises  of  the  Wisdom  history.  It  in- 
sisted, in  the  person  of  Job  and  against  the  too 
Calvinistic  friends,  on  a  God  whom  an  honest 
and  merciful  man  could  respect.  It  insisted,  in  the 
old-fogy  remonstrances  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  against 
the  self-pleasing  speculations  of  his  time,  on  reject- 
ing an  immortality  that  was  all  dreams  and  no 

358 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

character.  Yet  these  negations  did  not  hinder 
the  growth  of  a  large  philosophy  of  life,  or  work 
to  make  it  less  profound.  They  clarified  it  rather, 
and  gave  it  freer,  more  universal  course.  All  the 
while  the  great  ideas  of  life,  ideas  of  God,  of 
immortality,  of  the  essential  principles  of  being, 
were  orbing  into  sane  expression  and  taking  on 
the  natural  color;  proving  themselves  capable  of 
thriving  as  well  among  the  common  folk  as  among 
sages  and  poets  and  scholars,  and  of  having  as 
much  beauty  in  homely  parables  and  Poor  Rich- 
ard maxims  as  in  the  splendor  of  descriptive 
imagery.  The  tendencies  to  the  academic  and 
esoteric  were  kept  wisely  within  bounds;  and  most 
truly  of  all  in  the  words  of  Him  who  "taught  as 
one  having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes." 
His  wisdom,  highest  of  all,  was  also  the  simplest 
and  yet  the  most  intimately  enmeshed  with  life. 

But  it  was  also  the  Wisdom  of  God,  which  none 
of  the  princes  of  this  world  knew.  It  laid  hold,  as 
no  wisdom  had  done  before,  on  the  spiritual  cen- 
tres of  being.  The  Word  of  God,  men  came  to  call 
it;  the  Word  made  flesh;  as  it  were  the  greatest 
Idea  in  the  world  spelled  in  the  letters  of  concrete 
human  life.  Wisdom  had  become  not  merely  a 
thing  to  know,  but  a  thing  to  be.  And  now  to  get 
a  great  idea  sown  like  living  seed  into  the  hearts 

359 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

and  actions  of  men,  so  that  it  may  be  vital  in  their 
daily  affairs,  —  does  it  not  require  some  trans- 
lation and  applied  statement  ?  Does  it  not  indeed 
require  more  in  proportion  to  the  very  majesty  of 
it  ?  So  we  have  already  seen,  in  the  years  before 
Christ,  when  Wisdom  passed  from  its  great  rough- 
hewn  thoughts  into  the  making  of  many  books; 
so  we  may  naturally  expect  again. 

As  Jesus  walked  with  men,  going  on,  though 
in  the  ways  of  their  own  wisest  conduct,  to  the 
deeper  involvements,  the  more  rarefied  air,  of  his 
redemptive  and  Messianic  work,  we  may  well 
imagine  that  men  felt  a  sense  of  distance  widen- 
ing between  him  and  them;  just  as  the  disciples, 
when  they  saw  him  going  before  them  to  Jeru- 
salem and  Calvary,  were  amazed.  Wisdom  has 
indeed  dealt  with  mortal  powers,  in  life  and  word 
and  far-reaching  image;  it  has  taken  love  and 
faith  and  shaped  them  into  a  strong  and  tactful 
art;  but  it  is  so  limitless,  goes  on  to  such  an  ocean 
of  overflowing  life,  that  common  men,  then  as 
indeed  ever  since,  may  well  have  been 

"dazed,  as  one  who  wakes 
Half-blinded  at  the  coming  of  a  light,"  * 

and  still  have  said,  with  Ecclesiastes,  though  in 
the  bewilderment  of  rapture,  "  Far  off,  that  which 

1  Tennyson,  The  Coming  of  Arthur. 
360 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
is;  and  deep,  deep,  —  who  shall  find  it  ?"  or  with 
the  Psalmist,  "Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful 
for  me;  it  is  high,  I  cannot  attain  unto  it."   As 
a  matter  of  fact,  men  have  not  learned,  even  yet, 
how  to  love  their  enemies,  or  how  in  Christlike- 
ness  to  live  and  let  live.   They  have  not  the  cour- 
age to  go  on  being  themselves,  in  unretaliating 
integrity,   when  their  cheek  is  smitten  or  their 
dignity  is  invaded.    They  still  think  it  a  necessity 
to  be  more  or  less  depraved  and  sinful,  in  a  gain- 
saying world,  because  forsooth  Adam  supposedly 
made  them  so;  rather  than  to  be  perfect  as  their 
Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.    A  great  deal,  a  very 
great  deal,  of  the  Wisdom  of  God,  is  heedlessly 
suffered  to  be  a  dead  letter.    Men  think  perhaps 
that  they  must  postpone  it  to  a   future  state  of 
existence,  where  they  will  have  no  evil  body  or 
evil  world  to  bother  them,  and  where,  when  they 
can  put  it  off  no  longer,  they  will  have  to  be  good. 
They  call  themselves  Christian;  but  their  Chris- 
tianity is  very  imperfectly  developed  to  a  self-con- 
sistent wisdom;  and  it  still  remains  true,  as  when 
our  Lord  said  it,  that  the  children  of  this  world 
are  wiser  in  their  generation  than  the  children  of 
light. 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 


Perhaps  this  is  why,  in  the  providing  care  of  the 
Author  of  revelation,  the  Epistle  of  James  is  added, 
as  a  New  Testament  contribution,  to  the  body  of 
Wisdom  literature.  The  light  must  needs  be 
tempered,  perhaps,  and  reflected  upon  our  lowly 
neighborhood  and  parish  affairs,  in  order  that  we 
may  move  more  at  home  in  it,  realizing  how 
truly  it  is  the  light  of  common  day.  The  Epistle 
of  James :  —  not  a  treatise  this  time,  nor  tragic 
story,  nor  anthology  of  maxims,  but  just  a  familiar 
circular  letter,  as  from  friend  to  a  circle  of  friends; 
not  addressed  to  "  my  son,"  as  if  it  would  perpetu- 
ate the  superior  relation  of  sage  to  disciple,  but 
to  "my  brethren,"  as  if  it  would  impart  comrade 
shares  in  all.  But  with  all  this  least  exacting  of 
forms  and  tone,  the  Epistle  of  James  is  an  authen- 
tic book  of  Wisdom,  worthy  of  a  high  place  in  the 
list.  Nor  is  it  by  any  accommodation  of  terms  or 
deflection  of  meaning  that  we  count  it  in  the  same 
essential  Wisdom  strain  as  Proverbs  and  Job  and 
the  rest.  We  may  call  it  the  book  which  domes- 
ticates the  common  sense  of  the  new  attitude  to 
life  in  its  natural  home,  the  heart  of  the  common 
man.  There  is  nothing  imposing  or  sweetly  lit- 
erary about  it;  and  so  little  theology  of  justification 

362 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

by  faith  and  the  other  big  doctrines  that  Martin 
Luther  called  it "  an  epistle  of  straw."  Let  us  not, 
however,  mind  what  Luther  says,  but  look  at  it  for 
ourselves.  We  know  what  it  was  that  biassed  his 
judgment.  He  lived  in  a  time  when  one  great 
error  and  evil  loomed  up  before  him,  filling  his 
horizon  full;  and  the  truth  that  appealed  to  him 
was  the  truth  that  nucleated  round  one  great, 
needful,  immediate  remedy.  His  mind  was  fairly 
liberal,  but  it  was  not  in  attitude  to  go  far  afield 
for  general  religious  or  every-day  culture.  This 
epistle  it  was,  in  the  generous  field  of  scripture 
truth,  which  touched  the  blind  spot  in  his  eye. 

The  thing  which  gives  the  book  dominant 
interest  for  us,  an  interest  indeed  which  works 
in  untold  suggestiveness  as  soon  as  we  get  it  into 
our  heart  and  imagination,  is  the  fact  —  I  think, 
with  the  carefulest  scholars  we  may  squarely  take 
it  as  fact  —  that  the  James  who  wrote  it  was  the 
brother  of  our  Lord.  In  noting  what  the  book 
contains,  its  general  tone,  and  the  soul  of  Wisdom 
it  embodies,  I  do  not  propose,  of  course,  to  make 
its  value  depend  on  this  assumed  fact;  and  apart 
from  this,  the  book  is  a  richly  rewarding  study 
on  its  own  account,  and  on  account  of  its  rela- 
tion to  the  course  of  Wisdom  literature  which  it 
supplements  and  finishes.  But  it  pays  us  equally 
363 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

well  to  coordinate  the  book  with  what  this  view  of 
its  authorship  suggests.  It  is  eminently  in  char- 
acter: written  as  we  should  expect  an  actual  bro- 
ther of  our  Lord,  placed  in  a  position  where  like 
his  elder  and  greater  brother  he  is  endeavoring  to 
be  the  brother  of  every  man,  to  write.  There  is 
no  other  book  of  scripture  which  in  so  honest  and 
natural  way  echoes  the  sane  spirit  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  the  parables  as  does  this;  ex- 
tracting, so  to  say,  the  Wisdom  essence  of  these 
ideals  of  life,  and  giving  them  reasonableness  and 
currency  among  common  men. 

If  this  was  so,  between  the  lines  of  this  book 
we  get  some  glimpse  of  the  heritage  of  life  and 
thought  possessed  in  a  Galilean  village  of  Jesus' 
time;  the  common  life  and  common  thinking 
which  had  become  a  kind  of  cultural  atmosphere, 
as  the  word  of  prophets  and  lawgivers,  the  songs 
of  psalmists,  and  counsel  of  sages,  talked  over 
and  pondered,  had  wrought  to  make  men  sensible 
and  straight-seeing.  Let  us  not  mind  what  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  at  Jerusalem  thought  of  these 
Galileans.  They  were  concerned,  as  we  know, 
with  the  frills  and  minutiae  of  their  law  and  litera- 
ture; and  here  in  Galilee,  among  the  less  refined 
and  sophisticated,  we  are  likelier,  after  all,  to  find 
the  real  core  of  the  matter.  Up  here  in  Galilee 

364 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

men  were  remote  from  the  capital,  with  its  hier- 
archy and  temple  service;  in  the  pure  air  of  the 
hills  and  the  country,  where  the  solemn  pottering 
of  scribism  and  rabbinism  did  not  count.  Their 
religious  forms  were  the  simple  order  of  a  village 
synagogue.  From  this,  from  that  studying  of  scrip- 
ture wherein  every  one  was  at  liberty  to  read 
and  expound,  they  got  their  education.  That  this 
education  amounted  to  much  more  than  the  doc- 
tors at  Jerusalem  would  give  them  credit  for,  we 
are  not  left  to  conjecture;  we  know  from  many 
touches  of  result.  When  Titus  with  his  armies 
was  on  his  way  to  besiege  Jerusalem,  and  had 
reached  Galilee,  he  was  astonished,  it  is  said,  to 
find  that  any  ordinary  laborer  or  servant-girl 
could  give  intelligent  account  of  the  nation's 
customs  and  ideals  and  history;  a  remarkable 
contrast,  for  general  dissemination  of  ideals,  to 
his  own  or  any  other  nation  on  earth.  An  evidence 
of  the  same  thing  is  furnished  in  the  young  men 
who  went  to  the  Jordan  to  hear  John,  and  came 
to  Jesus  saying,  "Rabbi,  where  dwellest  thou?" 
and  afterward  accompanied  Jesus  from  place  to 
place,  curious  to  know  and  learn  of  his  new  teach- 
ing. Pure-minded  and  ingenuous  young  men 
these,  who  in  their  own  way  were  idealists  and 
thinkers.  True,  they  had  feelings  of  rivalry  be- 

365 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

tween  villages;  and  Nathanael,  down  there  in 
Bethsaida  by  the  lake,  was  inclined  to  doubt  if 
any  good  thing  could  come  out  of  Nazareth;  but 
when  they  came  to  compare  views,  they  found 
they  were  a  good  deal  alike.  All  were  students  of 
life;  ideas  had  entered  into  their  daily  work  and 
were  making  them  veritable  men  of  culture.  And 
in  that  Old  Testament  Bible  which  was  the  grand 
source  of  their  culture,  naturally  the  strain  of 
literature  especially  adapted  to  find  and  nourish 
them  would  be  that  literature  of  Wisdom  in  which 
the  common  duties  of  life  fall  into  their  place. 
That  would  be  eminently  potent  to  penetrate 
beneath  questions  of  ceremony  and  national  issues 
to  those  individual  and  workday  affairs  which 
are  vital  to  those  whose  school  and  church  and 
town-hall  was  the  village  synagogue.  So  in  such 
a  country  side  as  Galilee  we  could  trace  especially 
well  the  result  of  the  years  of  quiet  education  and 
counsel  which  the  sages  inaugurated  so  long  ago; 
could  feel  the  sentiment  and  atmosphere  of  things 
naturally  resulting. 

And  now,  if  the  Epistle  of  James  was  written 
by  our  Lord's  brother,  it  is  very  nearly  or  quite 
the  earliest  New  Testament  book  that  we  have; 
at  once  the  first  literary  stirrings  of  the  new  order, 
and  the  closest  connecting  link  with  the  Old  Tes- 

366 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

tament  attitude  to  things.  That  the  transition  it 
makes  from  old  to  new  should  be  so  gentle  and 
natural  as  to  seem  equally  the  efflux  of  both,  mani- 
festing no  cataclysm  of  change  but  just  a  quiet 
entrance,  as  it  were,  on  the  period  of  adult  growth, 
like  that  of  a  man  on  his  twenty-first  birthday,  is 
an  element  of  all  the  greater  interest  and  signifi- 
cance, however  it  may  be  lacking  in  revolution- 
ary features.  It  makes  so  much  more  realizable 
to  us  what  the  so-called  fulness  of  the  time  was 
like,  and  how  ready  to  inaugurate  a  new  era, 
among  those  open-minded  men  of  the  great  body 
of  the  nation  who  were  best  prepared  for  it. 

But  more  than  this,  and  most  intensely  sugges- 
tive. If  this  writer  was  our  Lord's  brother,  then 
we  have  here  a  strain  of  good  sense  and  kindly 
counsel  such  as  took  first  shape  and  tone  in  that 
very  Nazareth  household,  that  true-hearted  arti- 
san's family,  from  which  beamed  forth  in  gentle 
radiance  the  light  of  the  world.  We  can  look,  as 
it  were,  into  the  laboratory  where,  during  those 
thirty  formative  years  of  our  Lord's  life,  great 
thoughts  and  ideals  were  taking  shape,  as  he  in- 
creased in  wisdom  and  stature,  and  in  favor  with 
God  and  man.  We  have  a  vibration  of  the  things 
they  talked  about,  at  table  and  while  their  hands 
were  busy  at  work;  of  the  practical  views  and 

367 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF   WISDOM 

definitions  of  life  that  emerged  from  daily  dis- 
cussions, and  observations  of  their  common 
village  interests,  and  readings  of  the  Book  which 
was  the  Jew's  priceless  heritage.  How  homelike 
and  familiar  it  all  becomes!  How  charming 
become  James's  homely  images  of  the  grass  of  the 
field,  and  of  the  fountain  sending  forth  sweet 
water  and  bitter,  and  of  the  mirror,  and  of  the 
beasts  and  birds  and  serpents,  and  of  the  assem- 
blies and  market-places,  when  we  think  them 
by  the  side  of  His  words  who  spoke  of  lilies 
and  leaven  and  mustard-seed  and  fig-trees,  and 
of  goodly  pearls  and  raiment!  It  is  all  of  one  tone 
and  mental  habit.  Like  our  laureate  poet  after- 
ward, James  could  have  said  to  his  elder  brother, 
as  regarded  all  the  common  influences  which  the 
two  shared :  — 

"But  thou  and  I  are  one  in  kind, 
As  moulded  like  in  Nature's  mint; 
And  hill  and  wood  and  field  did  print 
The  same  sweet  forms  in  either  mind.  .  .  . 

"  At  one  dear  knee  we  proffer'd  vows, 
One  lesson  from  one  book  we  learn'd, 
Ere  childhood's  flaxen  ringlet  turn'd 
To  black  and  brown  on  kindred  brows."  1 

To  be  sure,  the   elder  brother   so  outstripped 
the  younger,  as  his  tremendous  venture  of  faith 

1  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  Ixxix. 
368 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
in  the  power  of  the  spirit  without  measure  im- 
posed its  large  demands  upon  him,  that  the 
younger,  along  with  the  mother  and  other  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  could  not  keep  up  with  him; 
and  once  they  feared  he  was  beside  himself;  but 
later  James  swung  loyally  into  line,  seeing,  as 
he  pondered  more  upon  it,  how  clear  was  the 
way  and  how  continuous,  from  their  plain  vil- 
lage ideals  of  wise  living  to  the  heights  of  vision 
and  depths  of  involvement  revealed  in  the  life 
and  work  of  the  elder. 

We  need  not  stumble  at  this  slow-moving  con- 
viction of  James,  or  wonder  that  he  waited  until 
the  resurrection  before  he  gave  full  committal  to 
his  brother's  interpretation  of  life.  It  does  not 
invalidate  the  earlier  genuineness  of  the  man  who 
in  time  came  to  be  called  James  the  Just;  it  sim- 
ply evidences  a  more  deliberate  spiritual  growth; 
and  that  this  was  not  resented  or  wondered  at 
on  the  part  of  Jesus  appears  from  the  fact  that 
the  latter  took  pains  after  his  resurrection  to 
show  himself  to  James,  as  if  this  were  all  James 
needed  to  clinch  his  belief.  It  must  indeed  have 
caused  great  searching  of  heart  and  readjustment 
of  a  life's  thinking,  when  James  became  aware 
that  he  was  brother  and  childhood  mate  of  the 
Messiah.  Both  the  humility  and  the  greatness 
369 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

that  inhered  in  the  consciousness,  both  the  lowly 
common  life  and  the  transcendently  removed 
larger  one,  would  for  a  while  stand  in  the  way. 
But  that  he  lived  himself  graciously  and  honor- 
ably into  the  relation,  we  have  his  blameless  later 
life  and  his  martyrdom  as  head  of  the  church  in 
Jerusalem  to  show.  We  have  also  this  epistle;  so 
answering  to  this  character,  whether  he  wrote  it 
or  not.  The  epistle  is  as  truly  in  the  natural  line 
of  things  as  is  the  man.  It  is  as  if  he  would  leave 
the  quickening  and  redemptive  work  to  the  elder 
brother;  to  him  also  the  grand  initiative  and,  so 
to  say,  definition  of  terms;  while  he,  the  younger 
brother  and  loyal  disciple,  set  himself  to  domes- 
ticate and  naturalize  the  larger  truths  in  the  idiom 
of  those  earlier  thirty  years.  What  was  our  Lord 
thinking,  we  have  often  asked  ourselves,  during 
all  his  pre-ministry  time,  when  from  the  age  of 
twelve  he  was  moving  in  the  consciousness  that 
in  some  unique  way  he  must  be  about  his  Fa- 
ther's business  ?  There  are  no  direct  words  of  his 
to  show;  but  if  this  epistle  is  his  brother's  work, 
we  come  nearer  to  it  than  anywhere  else;  we  may 
know  something  of  what  his  brother  was  think- 
ing then,  and  of  what  kind  of  thoughts  the  two 
brothers  had  in  common.  We  sense  the  tone  of 
the  household  in  which  Jesus  was  at  home. 

370 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 


ii 


"Can  any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth  ?" 
Nathanael  asked,  with  the  same  twinge  of  incre- 
dulity that  we  feel  when  we  think  of  a  hill-town 
hamlet  or  a  little  red  schoolhouse.    "Come  and 
see,"  was  the  reply.    Nathanael  was  fair-minded 
enough  to  go  and  see;    and  seeing  Jesus,  he  was 
immediately   convinced.     The   good    thing   that 
had   come   out   of  Nazareth,   out   of  the   heart 
of  the  common  people,  was  a  wisdom  that  the 
common  people   heard  gladly,   because  to  their 
soundly  tempered  mind  it  carried  its  own  author- 
ity.   Yet  also  it  proved  to  be  a  wisdom  for  all  the 
world.     Neither  common  nor  exalted  could  mo- 
nopolize it;  it  was  no  respecter  of  persons.    Later, 
when   that   same   wisdom   was   perpetuating   its 
vitality  in  little  companies  of  believers  here  and 
there,  another  son  of  Nazareth,  James,  was  called 
to  care  for  the  church  at  Jerusalem,  that  inof- 
fensive band,  not  many  wise  after  the  flesh,  not 
many   mighty,  not  many  noble,  who  were  still 
open-hearted  enough  to  be  nourished   by  what 
the  common  people  had  heard  gladly.    How  he 
first  got  there  and  when,  what  gave  him  his  dom- 
inating influence  even  beyond  the  called  and  ap- 
pointed apostles,  we  do  not  know.    Perhaps  it  was 
371 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

his  relationship  to  Jesus;  but  at  any  rate,  the  hon- 
orable title  he  came  to  bear  would  indicate  an 
intrinsic  reason  for  his  being  a  trusted  repository 
of  sane  counsel  and  helpfulness.  He  was  called 
James  the  Just,  as  also  his  father  Joseph  had 
before  him  been  called  the  just;  a  man  who 
not  only  kept  the  law  but  loved  it,  making  the 
good  old  customs  reasonable  and  liberal.  And 
through  long  years  James  cared  for  the  church, 
shaping  its  attitude  and  its  policy,  and  patiently 
translating  its  old  traditions  and  its  new  truths 
into  terms  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  He 
had  not  been  of  the  band  of  those  disciples 
who  accompanied  Jesus  through  the  cities  of 
Galilee  and  Judea  and  noted  with  wonder  the 
growth  of  his  Messianic  ideas.  His  doctrine 
footed  back  rather  to  the  thirty  years  period,  to 
a  more  youthful  companionship,  during  which 
ideas  inherited  from  a  long  Hebrew  past  were 
taking  on  new  form  and  power  and  beauty  in 
two  brothers'  minds  at  once.  What  these  ideas 
came  to  later,  as  illumined  by  crucifixion  and 
resurrection,  he  accepted  loyally,  as  soon  as  he  saw 
their  deep  meaning  for  life.  But  it  would  seem 
that  the  centre  of  their  appeal  to  him  was  in  their 
time-honored  roots  and  principles,  their  sound- 
ness as  an  educative  body  of  history  and  pro- 

372 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

phecy  and  precept.  With  the  distinctive  details 
of  Jesus'  ministry  he  seemed  to  have  less  to  do 
than  with  the  general  tissue  of  truth  which  the 
ministry  had  translated  into  new  power.  The 
Epistle  of  James,  vital  as  it  is  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  sounds  not  so  much 
like  the  echo  of  that  as  like  the  reverberation  of 
something  earlier,  something  which  long  before 
had  been  domesticated  as  household  words.  The 
only  allusion  the  epistle  makes  to  the  elder  bro- 
ther's history  is  in  a  very  unvindictive  mention 
of  his  tragic  death,  with  its  redeeming  feature 
identified  with  Christ's  magnanimous  attitude  of 
gracious  allowance.  "Ye  have  condemned  and 
killed  the  just,"  it  says,  "and  he  doth  not  resist 
you."1 

To  such  grounding  it  was,  to  such  wise  guid- 
ance, gracious  and  strong,  that  the  mother  church 
in  Jerusalem  was  entrusted. 

It  was  by  no  means  the  last  time  that  men 
have  come  from  the  hills  and  country  villages  to 
infuse  new  blood  into  the  veins  of  the  metropolis, 
and  keep  it  sweet  and  simple  in  heart.  Business, 
too,  is  often  enlarged  and  energized  by  country 
boys,  like  Marshall  Field  in  Chicago;  and  states- 
manship and  learning  and  philosophy  have  drawn 

1  James  v,  6. 

373 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

their  strongest  qualities  from  the  country.  Three 
centuries  ago,  a  Warwickshire  youth  went  up  to 
London,  and  among  the  wits  and  elegant  triflers 
of  the  metropolis  sounded  the  human  heart  in 
literature  to  such  result  that  Shakespeare  is  to 
this  day  the  greatest  name  in  English  letters. 
James,  here  in  Jerusalem,  wrote  as  well  as  spoke 
and  presided  at  councils  and  administered.  If, 
as  is  assumed,  this  epistle  was  his  work,  we  have 
from  his  hands  a  genuine  Wisdom  book,  pulsat- 
ing with  the  idiom  of  the  hills  and  of  homely 
nature.  It  was  still  for  the  common  people  whose 
hearts  remained  simple  and  single;  it  still  evi- 
dences what  is  true  in  all  ages,  that  the  genuine 
sinew  of  the  world  is  the  common  people. 

The  Epistle  of  James  is  a  kind  of  circular  let- 
ter, addressed  "to  the  twelve  tribes  which  are 
scattered  abroad,"  the  tribes  which  our  Lord 
said  the  disciples  were  some  day  to  judge,  and 
which  are  here  treated  just  as  if  in  becoming  Chris- 
tians they  had  abjured  no  whit  of  their  older  her- 
itage nor  ceased  to  be  Jews.  As  I  have  said,  the 
epistle  assumes  no  airs  of  the  sage;  and  the  wis- 
dom of  which  it  so  frequently  speaks  is  not  the 
wisdom  fed  out  to  men  from  a  desk  but  derived 
consciously  from  God,  who  giveth  to  all  men 
liberally  and  upbraideth  not.  Thus  the  book's 

374 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

tone,  in  a  sweet  advance  on  that  older  wisdom 
whose  beginning  was  the  fear  of  God,  is  first  filial, 
then  fraternal.  It  is  conceived  in  brotherly  com- 
rade vein;  begins  nearly  every  paragraph  with 
"my  brethren;"  as  if  the  brother  of  Christ  had 
taken  on  himself  the  gracious  office  and  minis- 
try of  being  brother  to  all  men.  The  literary  spice 
of  the  book  is  not  sought  by  imitation  of  the  old 
mashal  couplet,  or  by  any  effort  of  artistry;  there 
is,  however,  a  palpable  felicity  of  meaty  phras- 
ing, by  virtue  of  which  an  unusual  proportion 
of  James's  words  stick  to  the  memory;  and  the 
figures,  like  those  of  our  Lord's  discourses  and 
parables,  and  drawn  from  the  same  homely  and 
as  it  were  open-air  range  of  analogies,  are  very 
telling  and  illuminative. 

So  this  Epistle  of  James  is  a  little  manual  of 
good  sense  for  the  twelve  tribes  scattered  abroad; 
for  men  whose  lot  it  is  to  be  humble,  to  function 
as  it  were  on  the  under  side  of  dignities  and  noble 
distinctions,  and  yet  who  have  it  consciously  in 
them  to  be  the  salt  of  the  earth.  There  is  no  uni- 
tary term  that  so  well  names  the  ideal  that  James 
has  in  mind  for  them  as  the  word  character,  the 
character,  so  to  say,  of  the  Christian  gentleman; 
an  ideal  not  unlike  that  which  Ecclesiastes  has 
already  designed,  only,  instead  of  moving  with 

375 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

him  in  the  austere  atmosphere  of  hard  work  and 
a  crooked  world,  it  moves  in  the  cheery  atmos- 
phere of  light  and  faith  and  universal  good-will. 
In  the  sense  of  this  ideal  he  confers  on  them  a 
patent  of  real  nobility,  with  which  the  artificial 
distinctions  of  men  cannot  interfere;  it  is  their 
business,  as  men  begotten  of  God's  will  with  the 
word  of  truth,  to  be  a  kind  of  first-fruits  of  His 
creatures.  The  enlarging  nobility  of  a  new-created 
world  thus  depends  on  them,  as  they  set  the  pace, 
erecting  the  standard  of  gracious  living,  which  to 
latest  time  men  may  emulate  and  copy.  In  this 
consciousness  artificial  ranks  and  aristocracies 
disappear.  A  new  stratum  of  being  is  created 
whereon  man  as  man  is  reduced  to  the  generous 
level,  or  rather  raised  to  the  honorable  table- 
land where  all  life  is  one:  the  brother  of  low 
degree  rejoicing  that  he  is  exalted,  the  rich  like- 
wise rejoicing  that  he  is  made  low;  the  one  lifted 
consciously  to  a  height  where  life  consists  not  in 
the  abundance  of  possessions,  the  other  brought 
down  from  the  selfish  icy  isolation  where  his  soul 
shivers  alone  in  its  tottering  eminence,  to  the 
broad  field  of  common  manhood  where  he  is  at 
one  with  all  the  happy  creation  of  God. 

Thus  the  book  takes  its  stand  on  a  universal 
basis  of  manhood  which  brings  it  at  once  into 

376 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

direct  relation  with  that  primal  impulse  of  wisdom 
which,  as  we  saw  in  the  beginning  of  our  inquiry, 
made  it  practically  synonymous  with  getting  rich, 
with  securing  the  recognized  values  of  this  world, 
in  whatever  terms — honors,  long  life,  prosperity — 
these  expressed  themselves.  In  its  Christian  light 
the  real  riches,  the  real  values  of  life,  appear  in 
their  true  principle  and  color.  Just  as  in  Jesus' 
teaching,  so  here  in  James's,  the  sternest  note  of 
warning  and  denunciation  is  directed  against  the 
rich;  not,  however,  because  of  their  riches,  but 
because  of  the  unbrotherly  attitude  which  riches 
so  naturally  engender;  because  of  the  heart- 
less fraud  which  keeps  back  the  just  hire  of  the 
laborer,  and  which  has  reduced  life  to  commer- 
cialism and  wanton  pleasure-seeking.  And  his 
most  genial  and  comforting  note  vibrates  to  honor 
the  poor  of  this  world  rich  in  faith;  not,  how- 
ever, merely  because  they  are  poor,  but  because, 
with  their  accession  to  the  true  riches,  there  is 
left  on  earth  no  ground  for  the  external  distinc- 
tions of  class,  or  for  respect  of  persons. 

All  this  is  surely  a  mintage  from  the  athletic 
strain  of  Wisdom  which  Job's  attack  by  centre 
brought  so  trenchantly  to  the  heart  of  man;  an 
echo  of  him  who  dared  not  respect  the  person 
even  of  God,  in  such  wise  as  to  forsake  one  whit 

377 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

of  the  Godlike,  and  who  to  his  false  friends  could 

say,— 

"Will  ye  respect  His  person? 
Or  will  ye  be  special  pleaders  for  God  ?  .  .  . 
He  will  surely  convict  you  utterly, 
If  in  secret  ye  are  respecters  of  persons."  1 

No  more  can  a  Christian,  with  the  divine  light 
in  his  soul,  be  a  special  pleader  for  men.  But 
this  mintage  from  the  Job  spirit  was  made,  one 
feels  sure,  in  those  early  Nazareth  days,  when 
James  and  his  elder  brother  used  to  talk  over 
the  principles  of  life  that  later  found  like  ex- 
pression in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the 
parables.  Neither  brother  had  any  room  in  his 
soul  for  respect  of  persons.  Neither  could  make 
wealth,  nor  adventitious  distinction,  nor  anything 
but  brotherly  love  and  helpfulness,  his  standard 
of  honor;  and  to  both  alike  the  first  beatitude 
would  be,  "Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  for 
theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

Such  an  ideal  of  character  has  its  stable  ele- 
ments of  principle,  which  none  can  miss  or  mis- 
take. You  know  where  to  find  it.  You  can  lean 
upon  it.  For  one  thing,  it  is  just  and  steady;  its 
faith  is  not  an  emotion  or  a  speculation  but  an 
integrity;  it  holds  to  its  aspiration  of  wisdom 
without  wavering  or  double-mindedness.  This 

1  Job  xiii,  8-10. 
378 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
last  word,  the  word  double-minded,  is  thought 
to  be  a  coinage  of  St.  James's;  and  ever  since 
he  introduced  it,  it  has  figured  to  great  purpose 
in  the  Christian  vocabulary.  "A  double-minded 
man,"  he  says,  "is  unstable  in  all  his  ways;"1  has 
no  stamina,  is  not  as  we  say  placed,  but  tosses 
about  like  a  wind-driven  wave  of  the  sea.  "  Cleanse 
your  hands,  ye  sinners,"  he  says  again,  "and 
purify  your  hearts,  ye  double-minded."  2  Along 
with  this  steadiness  and  singleness  of  mind  goes 
also  the  word  which  mirrors  the  mind  to  the 
world.  As  a  poet  puts  it, "  man's  word  is  God  in 
man."  It  is  surely  another  echo  from  the  Naza- 
reth days  when  James  says,  "Above  all  things, 
swear  not, .  .  .  but  let  your  yea  be  yea,  and  your 
nay,  nay;"3  let  your  character  be  so  of  one  tissue 
and  truth  that  your  word  is  better  than  your  oath; 
this  same  thing  we  have  heard  in  the  precepts 
of  the  elder  brother.  "If  any  man  offend  not 
in  word,"  James  says  further,  "the  same  is  a  per- 
fect man,  and  able  also  to  bridle  the  whole  body.'*  * 
And  the  exquisite  passage  about  the  power  of 
the  tongue,  which  follows  this  remark,  is  of  a 
piece  with  this  ideal  of  steadiness  and  singleness; 
it  cannot  bear  that  blessing  and  cursing  should 

1  James  i,  8.  *  James  iv,  8. 

*  James  v,  12.  Cf.  Matthew  v,  33-37.  4  James  iii,  2. 

379 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF  WISDOM 

proceed  out  of  the  same  mouth,  like  waters  sweet 
and  bitter  out  of  the  same  fountain.  The  man  of 
faith  should  move  and  speak  and  live  all  together, 
all  as  it  were  one  homogeneous  fabric,  from  any 
part  of  which  men  may  deduce  the  rest,  and  be 
aware  of  the  solid  centre  of  the  man. 

For  another  thing,  such  ideal  of  character  has, 
like  the  old  Wisdom,  its  own  standard  and  aim 
of  self-culture.  The  very  first  precept  of  the  book 
introduces  us  to  this,  and  at  the  outset  directs 
the  soul's  achievement  to  the  highest  and  hardest 
things.  St.  James,  as  truly  as  the  sages  before 
him,  is  concerned  with  self-culture,  a  counsel  of 
perfection;  with  this  new  coloring  and  motive, 
that  it  is  rigorous  training  in  the  interests  of  a 
life  which  is  acting  on  others,  and  which  is  to  be 
a  kind  of  model  for  a  new-created  world.  "Of 
his  own  will  begat  he  us  with  the  word  of  truth," 
is  the  source  and  purpose  recognized,  "that  we 
should  be  a  kind  of  first-fruits  of  his  creatures."  * 
A  pretty  high  trust  and  responsibility  this,  is 
it  not  ?  for  a  lowly  sect  of  Hebrew  laymen  and 
wage-earners  to  assume.  And  so,  in  pursuance 
of  this  trust,  the  book  strikes  at  once  for  that 
masterful  mood  which  will  make  the  hardest  and 
most  perilous  experiences  in  life  cultural.  "My 

1  James  i,  18. 
380 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

brethren,  count  it  all  joy  when  ye  fall  into  divers 
temptations;  knowing  this,  that  the  trying  of  your 
faith  worketh  patience.  But  let  patience  have  her 
perfect  work,  that  ye  may  be  perfect  and  entire, 
wanting  nothing."2  This  is  thoroughly  coordi- 
nate with  that  fibre  of  justness,  steadiness,  sin- 
gle-mindedness,  which  we  have  already  noted. 
Patience  —  this  basal  virtue  of  St.  James's,  the 
inculcation  of  which  in  some  phase  is  one  of  the 
most  pervasive  notes  of  his  book,  resolves  itself 
for  me  into  no  term  so  fitting  as  our  breezy  word 
staying-power.  It  refers  itself  to  that  God  who, 
in  His  constancy  of  good  gifts  to  men,  works 
unweariedly  in  a  beneficence  wherein  is  no  vari- 
ableness, neither  shadow  of  turning;  the  same 
God,  and  in  the  same  aspect,  whom  the  Elder 
Brother  bids  men  emulate,  in  being  perfect  as 
their  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.  And  as  the 
final  term  of  perfection,  James  directs  our  stay- 
ing-power to  the  hardest  things,  the  things  that 
develop  spiritual  muscle  and  tissue,  the  things 
that  steady  and  toughen  the  spiritual  sinews. 
To  emphasize  this,  he  draws  on  the  grandest  old 
Wisdom  book  of  all,  bidding  his  readers  emulate 
the  patience  of  Job,  from  which  he  deduces  "the 
end  of  the  Lord."  Get  the  doing  of  the  hardest 

1  James  i,  2,  3. 
381 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

things,  the  sturdy  conquering  of  the  most  invet- 
erate foes,  into  your  blood  and  bone,  and  all  the 
easier  things  fall  into  natural  relation.  It  is  the 
same  virtue  of  staying-power  with  which  St.  Peter 
likewise  starts  his  Christian  community  in  the  new 
life;  *  the  same  that  St.  Paul  weaves  into  his  organic 
ideal  of  self-culture.  "And  not  only  so,"  says  the 
latter,  "but  we  glory  in  tribulations  also,'*  —  not 
accept  them  under  protest  or  as  a  necessary  evil, 
but  glory  in  them  as  an  invaluable  asset  of  life,  — 
"knowing  that  tribulation  worketh  patience;  and 
patience,  experience;  and  experience,  hope;  and 
hope  maketh  not  ashamed;  because  the  love  of 
God  is  shed  abroad  in  our  hearts,  by  the  Holy 
Spirit  which  is  given  unto  us." 2  And  this,  with 
the  directed  energy  it  entails,  is  carried  on  to  the 
very  highest  end  a  man  can  live  for  or  attain. 
"To  them,"  says  this  same  Paul,  "who  by  patient 
continuance  in  well-doing  seek  for  glory  and  honor 
and  immortality,  eternal  life." 3  Thus,  in  this 
virtue  of  staying-power,  the  strong  and  sinewy 
virtue  of  the  new  Wisdom,  James  and  all  the  other 
pioneer  inculcators  of  the  Christian  character  are 
at  one. 

This  manual  of  Christian  self-culture  turns  out 

1  Cf.  i  Peter  ii.  19,  20.  2  Romans  v,  3-5. 

8  Romans  ii,  7. 

382 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
to  be  very  comprehensive;  more  so  than  we  can 
trace  in  detail.  There  is,  for  instance,  given  in 
a  philosophic  tone  much  like  that  of  the  Wisdom 
of  Solomon,  a  penetrative  analysis  of  the  lusts 
that  war  in  our  members;  which  are  acknow- 
ledged as  man's  alone,  and  no  compulsion  of 
God's  or  nature's,  and  which  then  are  followed 
along  the  analogy  of  nature  to  their  malign  off- 
spring of  the  second  and  third  generation,  sin  and 
death.  It  is  the  same  quasi-scientific  sense  of 
things  that  we  have  found  pervading  the  whole 
body  of  Wisdom  and  increasing  with  its  growth: 
the  sense  that  a  man's  harvest  is  according  to  his 
sowing,  and  that  he  has  no  right  to  unload  his 
evil  propensities  on  God.  The  strong,  self-direc- 
tive individual  has  come  royally  to  his  own,  and  the 
spirit  of  rounded  character  in  him,  while  willing 
to  accept  all  the  responsibilities  of  his  success  or 
failure,  is  using  a  power  not  his  own,  and  in  the 
assured  truth  of  that  power  is  eager  to  be  perfect 
and  entire,  wanting  nothing.  The  new  overflow 
of  life  has  not  diminished  the  appetency  for  self- 
culture.  Rather,  it  has  made  it  deeper  and  keener; 
has  made  the  soul  desirous  to  gain  the  nobler 
thing  that  it  may  have  the  nobler  thing  to  impart; 
and  has  made  the  very  experience  which  in  a 
passive,  law-ridden  life,  the  sense  of  which  caused 
383 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

Ecclesiastes  such  gloom,  was  its  source  of  weak- 
ness —  namely,  the  onset  of  evil  and  crushing  en- 
vironment —  now  its  source  of  strength.  The 
change  in  fundamental  direction  has  made  the 
difference.  It  is  not  until  the  current  of  life  has 
turned  from  passive  to  active,  from  selfward  to 
outward  flowing,  that  like  James  we  can  breathe 
blessings  on  our  temptations,  and  like  Paul  can 
"glory  in  tribulations  also,"  those  austere  friends 
in  disgu'se  which,  through  an  ascending  scale 
of  seasoning  discipline,  conduct  the  character  to 
the  height  where  the  love  of  God  is  shed  abroad 
in  the  heart. 

"Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  was  our  Lord's 
homely  figure  to  describe  the  function  in  society 
of  those  who  were  learning  life-lessons  of  him. 
It  is  your  business  to  keep  the  corporate  life  sweet 
and  wholesome  and  savorsome.  James,  brought 
up  in  the  same  Nazarene  household,  accepts  the 
trust,  and  translates  it  into  detailed  duty  and  op- 
portunity; by  this  means  conferring  on  his  diocese 
of  lowly  brethren  the  truest  patent  of  nobility. 
And  so  the  man  of  his  counsel,  who  for  scholar- 
ship or  wealth  or  distinction  would  seem  to  be 
only  the  man  on  the  under  side  of  things,  becomes 
the  real  power  and  vital  saving  influence  of  the 
upper;  he  is  the  power  behind  the  throne,  the 

384 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
nerve  and  sinew  of  a  worthier  body  politic.  This, 
when  we  come  to  think  of  it,  is  the  noblest  service 
that  the  Wisdom,  instituted  by  sages  and  coun- 
sellors so  long  ago,  can  render  to  humanity.  It 
is  the  domestication  and  every-day  working  of  the 
Wisdom  of  God. 

in 

Wisdom  has  found  its  permanent  home  in  the 
common  heart;  in  the  sweetening  of  neighborly 
relations  and  duties,  in  the  acceptance  of  an  ideal 
of  patience  and  justice  and  good-will.  It  is  all  so 
common-sense  and  obvious  that  we  take  it,  with- 
out any  thrill  of  brilliancy  or  novelty,  as  a  matter 
of  course.  But  let  us  glance  a  little  now,  by  way  of 
summing  up,  at  the  road  we  have  traversed  and 
the  goal  we  have  reached.  What  has  become  of 
the  Hebrew  Wisdom  as  a  developed  strain  of  life 
and  literature,  as  a  philosophy  of  life  by  the  side 
of  other  philosophies;  as  a  candidate  for  the 
reward,  the  prosperity,  the  wage,  which  from  the 
beginning  has  bulked  so  large  in  the  sages'  ideal  ? 
Has  it  from  crude  and  folk's  beginnings  altered 
into  "something  rich  and  strange,"  as  it  were 
revolutionary;  or  has  its  growth  been  merely  from 
germ  to  completed  organism,  with  the  promise  of 
its  beginning  clarified  and  fulfilled  ? 
385 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

In  the  opening  chapter  of  our  book  we  spoke 
of  the  various  strains  of  national  genius;  distin- 
guishing the  Hebrews,  with  their  genius  for  reli- 
gion, by  the  side  of  the  Greeks,  with  their  genius 
for  art  and  philosophy,  and  the  Romans,  with 
their  genius  for  organization  and  government. 
The  Wisdom  strand  of  the  Hebrew  literature, 
as  we  noted  then,  would  seem  at  first  thought  to 
have  been  a  little  aside  from  its  main  trend; 
like  the  efforts  of  a  man  to  express  himself  in 
an  essentially  foreign  idiom,  as  Browning  repre- 
sents Dante  trying  for  once  to  paint  an  angel,  and 
Raphael  essaying  to  make  a  century  of  sonnets. 
The  natural  channel  of  the  Hebrews'  religious 
genius  would  seem  to  have  been  mystic  revela- 
tion :  the  divinely  given  law  of  being  mediated  by 
Moses  and  the  priests,  and  the  "Thus  saith  the 
Lord "  mediated  and  proclaimed  by  prophets. 
Wisdom,  the  third  strand  of  their  literature,  pro- 
fessing for  once  to  be  nothing  more  than  the 
native  insight  of  man,  interrogating  the  ongoings 
of  nature,  especially  of  human  nature,  in  its 
every-day  relations  with  the  world  of  labor  and 
management  and  secular  activities,  represented, 
so  to  say,  the  Hebrew's  well-meant  endeavor  to 
speak  in  a  character  not  of  native  genius  but  of 
studied  talent,  and  be,  so  far  as  he  could  compass 

386 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
it,  like  a  Greek  or  a  Roman.  And  what  it  came 
to  in  practical  living  and  precept  we  have  seen. 
To  the  end  his  Wisdom,  keen  and  worldly  as 
it  was,  that  Wisdom  which  began  instinctively 
with  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  was  shot  through  and 
through  with  religion.  The  national  genius  could 
not  but  express  itself  idiomatically;  its  natural 
color  must  be  imparted  to  his  secular  affairs  and 
ideals.  To  get  now  at  the  real  inwardness  of 
this  fact,  we  can  do  no  better,  I  think,  than 
to  go  back  to  the  founder  of  the  nation,  that 
remarkably  well  individualized  patriarch  whose 
first  name,  Jacob,  itself  prophetic,  was  changed 
later  for  the  name  Israel,  which  recognized  in  his 
nature  a  higher  and  supplementing  strain.  The 
whole  developing  spirit  of  Wisdom  is  in  a  signifi- 
cant sense  embodied  in  this  man. 

Jacob,  "the  supplanter,"  as  his  name  indicates, 
the  child  who  on  coming  into  the  world  took  hold 
on  his  elder  brother's  heel;  who  as  a  youth  at 
home  was  shrewdly  on  hand  to  bargain  for  his 
brother's  birthright  and  defraud  him  of  his  bless- 
ing; who  as  soon  as  he  left  home  and  came  in 
contact  with  others  began  to  enrich  himself  at 
the  expense  of  his  father-in-law,  Laban,  —  this 
Jacob,  with  his  scheming,  unscrupulous  ways, 
seems  at  first  thought  like  scarcely  other  than 
387 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

acquisitiveness  incarnate.  The  good  things  of 
this  world  seem  by  native  attraction  to  come  his 
way.  If  he  were  to  infuse  a  genius  into  a  nation's 
character,  we  should  expect  it  to  be  first  of  all  the 
commercial  genius,  the  genius  for  getting  rich. 
And  that,  moreover,  is  the  first  impression  we  get 
from  the  Hebrew  as  we  see  him  to-day.  It  is  not 
his  religious  genius  that  is  to-day  in  evidence,  but 
the  keen-eyed  genius  for  profit  which,  while  we 
Gentiles  are  heedless,  is  quietly,  as  the  phrase  is, 
getting  there.  What  more  than  all  else  impresses 
and  disquiets  us  in  the  present-day  Jew,  is  his 
persistent,  inveterate  genius  for  material  success. 
But  as  we  look  more  penetratively  into  the 
character  of  Jacob,  we  become  aware  of  deeper 
and  as  it  were  regulative  and  corrective  traits. 
For  one  thing,  he  always  had  regard  not  merely 
to  the  end,  as  if  that  were  to  be  attained  at  all 
hazards,  but  to  the  means  he  would  take;  and 
these  were  devised  as  a  self-justifying  law  of  pro- 
cedure, so  that  no  rule  or  statute  could  come 
back  on  him  to  punish.  This  is  still  characteristic 
of  his  descendant;  it  is  his  ingrained  regard  for 
law  making  itself  felt.  His  object  shall  come  as 
it  were  in  the  order  of  nature.  For  another  and 
the  determining  thing,  Jacob  had  a  capacity  for 
the  things  of  the  spirit,  an  appetency,  so  to  say, 

388 


AS   BETWEEN  BROTHERS 

for  God.  He  could  not  become  so  immersed  in 
wealth-getting  and  worldly  scheming  but  that, 
when  he  met  the  angel  bearing  the  unseen  bless- 
ing, he  would  wrestle  all  night  to  secure  that 
blessing,  determined  to  prevail.  Whatever  he 
came  to  see  as  highest  and  holiest,  that  with  his 
other  acquisitions  he  must  also  have;  and  that 
highest,  when  the  stress  and  test  came,  must  have 
the  casting-vote.  In  his  strong  allegiance  to  the 
ideal,  the  capacity  to  make  himself  at  home  in 
a  realm  higher  than  acquisitiveness,  Jacob  earned 
the  name  Israel,  "the  prince  of  God."  Yet  this 
new  name  did  not  register  a  nature  essentially 
changed,  but  only  the  development  of  his  inner 
being,  as  it  were  the  coming  of  his  most  genuine 
self  to  light  and  power. 

This  character  of  Jacob-Israel,  whatever  it 
means  for  the  Jew  of  to-day,  is  a  parable,  or  rather 
a  veritable  type  of  the  course  and  deepening 
progress  of  that  Wisdom  whose  culmination  we 
have  now  reached.  At  every  step,  so  to  say,  down 
into  the  Jacob  stratum,  where  was  the  calculat- 
ing, tenacious,  single-eyed  appetency  for  success, 
there  reached  the  genial  yet  disturbing  influence 
of  a  better  ideal  and  impulse,  making  the  soul 
ashamed  to  be  unscrupulous,  keeping  it  solicitous 
about  its  aims  and  motives;  and  this  influence 
389 


HEBREW  LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

continued  in  increasing  clarity  and  prevalence 
until  the  Israel  stratum  of  character  crowned  the 
work,  and  the  Wisdom  of  acquisitiveness,  with 
its  appetency  of  success  still  as  strong  as  ever 
upon  it,  became  the  Wisdom  of  impartation. 

This,  in  large,  massive  outline,  is  the  meaning 
of  the  development  we  have  traced.  James,  with 
his  homely  vein  of  common  sense,  is  yet  clear- 
sighted to  note  its  culminating  point  and  end. 
The  Wisdom  which  far  back  in  the  centuries  men 
began  to  explore  and  to  mould  item  by  item  into 
mashals  of  counsel,  began  without  display  and 
without  assumption,  as  a  wisdom  from  beneath, 
reaching  up  in  reverence  toward  the  source  of 
power  and  truth;  reaching  outward  toward  the 
world  of  men  and  men's  affairs,  by  the  tentacles 
of  observation,  experience,  meditation.  It  learned 
to  use  all  the  prudences  and  subtleties  of  mind, 
the  skill,  the  cleverness,  the  tact,  the  foresight, 
the  sagacity  of  word  and  silence,  whereby  man 
works  his  will  on  fellow-man,  or  gets  his  due  from 
him.  It  was,  on  a  somewhat  larger  scale,  strangely 
like  that  keen  shrewdness  of  Jacob  as  year  after 
year  he  toiled  in  the  fields  with  the  flocks  of 
Laban.  And  at  the  outset  its  ideal,  confined  to  this 
visible  world,  was  scarcely  more  than  the  ideal 
of  getting  rich,  of  achieving  worldly  success,  in 

390 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
whatever  terms  this  was  expressed;  and  in  the 
means  it  turned  toward  this  end  it  hardly  dis- 
tinguished between  higher  and  lower,  sacred  and 
secular.  It  had  to  come  into  its  higher  ideals 
step  by  step,  and  by  the  reacting  power  of  deeper 
experience.  And  so  ever  as  it  reached  outward 
and  upward  there  came  answers  according  to  its 
insight  and  committal,  and  ever  it  was  mysteri- 
ously guided  to  build  better  than  it  knew. 

Nor  was  its  course  at  any  period  an  unimpeded 
rapture  of  discovery  and  acquisition.  There  came 
wrestlings  with  the  angel  in  the  night;  there  came 
impulses  to  earn  a  nobler  and  worthier  name; 
and  as  if  some  unseen  Power  had  reached  down  to 
overrule  it,  it  was  time  after  time  delivered  from 
its  aberrations  and  its  too  sordid  or  petty  motives. 
Agur  and  Satan  and  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  with 
their  clearer  seeing  eyes  and  their  central  and  flank 
attacks  of  reaction,  must  all  have  their  share  in 
the  shaping  of  its  purer  ideal. 

Then  came  duly,  in  its  fulness,  the  reversing 
outward  current  of  spirit,  the  overflow  of  life  so 
poignantly  missed,  so  veritably  real;  came  as  the 
majestic  incarnation  of  the  Wisdom  of  God. 
And  when  it  came,  the  Wisdom  which  hitherto 
had  wrought  as  if  it  were  all  from  beneath  woke 
to  find  that  it  was  all  from  above,  that  every  good 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

and  perfect  gift  it  had  earned  had  come  from 
Him  whose  nature  it  is  to  have  grace  and  impart 
Himself,  whose  loving  work  in  the  world  is  just 
to  give  to  all  men  liberally  and  upbraid  not.  That 
was  the  meaning  of  His  sunshine  and  His  rain; 
that  was  the  spirit  which  was  to  be  infused  into 
His  highest  learners  and  servants,  that  they 
might  be  a  kind  of  first-fruits  of  His  creatures. 
So  the  tact  and  subtlety  and  cleverness  which 
Wisdom  had  so  freely  employed  were  transformed 
into  the  gracious  tact  and  subtlety  and  cleverness 
of  unselfish  fraternalism;  living,  but  also  letting 
live,  and  helping  to  live;  making  goodness  an 
art.  Wisdom,  then,  is  ready  for  its  supreme 
definition;  which  here  comes  as  a  matter  of 
course.  "The  wisdom  that  is  from  above,"  says 
James,  "is  first  pure,  then  peaceable,  gentle,  easy 
to  be  entreated,  full  of  mercy  and  good  fruits, 
without  variance  and  without  hypocrisy.  And 
the  fruit  of  righteousness  is  sown  in  peace,  of 
them  that  make  peace."1  It  has  learned,  as  the 
result  of  its  long  education,  the  supreme  courage 
of  faith  in  human  nature;  has  dared  to  commit 
itself  to  the  wisdom  of  being  like  God,  as  in 
purity  of  heart  it  has  come  to  see  God. 

Have  we  not  here  a  noble  chapter  of  manhood 

4 

1  James  iii,  17,  18. 
392 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
evolution  ?  The  fact  that  it  has  made  its  home 
and  headquarters  in  the  hearts  of  common  men, 
the  oppressed  and  dispersed  of  the  earth,  is  all 
the  more  to  its  glory;  if  these  can  have  the  power 
to  sweeten  and  inherit  the  earth,  by  just  embody- 
ing the  elemental  brotherhood  of  mankind,  surely 
the  brothers  of  high  degree,  as  soon  as  they  swing 
into  the  common  orbit  of  good-will,  will  not  profit 
less  by  it.  The  first-fruits  of  God's  creatures,  in 
their  unwearied  vitality  and  staying-power,  shall 
increasingly  look  on  the  results  of  their  faith,  in 
the  splendor  of  harvests. 

How  now  does  the  developed  philosophy  of 
life,  that  unobtrusive  and  unconventional  solu- 
tion of  things  to  which  from  the  beginning  this 
common  sense  in  an  uncommon  degree  has  been 
essentially  directed,  look,  as  compared  with  the 
top-heavy  philosophies  that  through  the  ages 
scholars  have  been  devising  out  of  their  books 
and  their  speculations  ?  A  tremendous  ferment  of 
research  and  inquiry  has  been  constantly  going 
on;  no  age  or  nation  without  it;  as  Ecclesiastes 
figures  it,  almost  like  a  disease,  an  obsession,  of 
restless  humanity. 

Well,  let  us  apply  it  to  the  three  great  ideas 
that  in  effect  fill  the  field  of  philosophy,  and  that 
men  have  always  been  working  eagerly  to  get 
393 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

into  systematic  order  and  prove  true  or  false; 
the  ideas  of  God,  immortality,  freedom.  That 
poor  melancholy  old  biologist  of  our  time,  Pro- 
fessor Haeckel,  in  his  endeavor  to  guess  the 
riddle  of  the  universe  on  one  monistic  principle, 
and  virtually  reduce  all  life  to  the  dimensions 
of  the  germ,  roundly  denies  all  three,  as  childish 
and  discarded  superstitions,  and  is  trying  austerely 
to  reconstruct  a  world  widowed  of  every  vestige 
of  a  spiritual  ideal. 

In  our  present  inquiry  we  have  seen  how  Job 
has  brought  the  idea  of  God  into  court,  and  com- 
pelled it  to  show  its  credentials,  and  given  it  the 
conditions  on  which  it  shall  survive:  that  it  shall 
comprise  love  and  care  for  every  creature  and  a 
truth  in  which  friendship  and  brotherhood  may 
thrive;  have  seen  also  how,  in  process  of  time, 
men  came  to  associate  with  that  idea  the  name 
Father,  and  commit  themselves  to  the  involve- 
ments of  its  natural  correlate,  the  name  of  sons, 
and  the  common  interests  of  a  manhood  family. 
If  this  is  not  an  abysmal  philosophy  of  Deity, 
it  is  certainly  a  vital  working-idea,  a  practical 
means  of  making  the  Godlike  real  by  making  it 
operative.  We  have  noted  likewise  how  the  idea 
of  immortality  came  into  court,  and  how  Ecclesi- 
astes  insisted  on  laying  its  basis  in  the  ennobled 

394 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
character  of  the  intrinsic  man;  delaying  men's 
speculations  on  the  unseen  future  until  they  had 
evolved  a  man  fit  for  the  glories  of  it;  and  how, 
in  the  fulness  of  the  time,  immortality  too  melted 
into  the  radiance  of  a  present  accomplished  fact, 
which  in  all  its  essential  principles  could  be  util- 
ized here  and  now.  Both  these  ideas,  God  and  im- 
mortality, have  been  transferred  from  the  sphere 
of  erudite  speculation  to  the  sphere  of  realized 
life;  are  things  not  to  know  or  to  prove,  as  if 
they  were  remote  and  external  to  us,  but  things 
to  be,  and  to  shape  life  in.  And  all  this  has  come 
about  in  the  simplest  growth  of  experience  and 
concept,  as  it  were  an  equable  process  of  man- 
hood nature. 

There  remains  the  third  great  idea,  the  idea 
of  freedom.  What  has  become  of  that,  in  our 
growing  structure  of  Wisdom  ?  Haeckel,  you 
know,  is  especially  savage  in  his  denial  of  this. 
He  is  moving  in  a  realm  of  iron  grinding  law, 
wherein  our  species  and  environment  and  hered- 
ity imprison  us  in  a  lot  where,  however  high 
our  intellect  may  rise,  we  are  after  all  only  auto- 
mata, which  can  run  only  a  little  while  and  then 
cease  altogether.  With  James,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  freedom,  that  tremendous  emancipation  of 
the  spirit  after  which  it  is  so  in  man  to  strive,  has 
395 


become  a  luminous,  sensible,  universal  fact.  He 
need  not,  indeed,  say  much  about  it,  any  more  than 
we  need  to  take  painful  note  of  breathing  or  the 
process  of  digestion;  but  what  he  says  takes  the 
whole  truth  for  granted,  as  a  matter  of  course.  It 
appears  most  strikingly,  perhaps,  in  the  paradoxi- 
cal name  that  he  gives  to  the  law  by  which  we  are 
environed,  and  which  is  still,  as  law  ever  must 
be,  in  full  current  of  control  and  obligation.  He 
calls  it  "the  law  of  liberty."  That  is  what  it  is  to 
him  who,  as  James  the  Just,  not  only  obeys  law 
but  loves  it.  "  So  speak  ye,  and  so  do,"  he  says, 
"as  they  that  shall  be  judged  by  the  law  of  lib- 
erty;"1 that  is,  not  by  some  alien  code  imposed 
by  a  will  or  fate  from  without,  and  which  you  must 
obey  or  be  punished,  but  by  the  principle  of  doing 
just  as  you  like.  That,  he  says,  is  what  you  are 
to  be  judged  by,  doing  as  you  like;  therefore  live 
up  to  that.  Consider  how  far  this  audacious  coun- 
sel has  brought  us  in  the  consciousness  of  free- 
dom. Think  how  it  would  seem  to  the  priest, 
who  has  had  the  law  in  charge,  and  to  the  prophet, 
who  has  spent  his  time  denouncing  infractions 
of  it.  You  have  the  principle  of  life  within  you, 
the  brotherly  impulse  of  good-will  which  works 
no  ill,  but  rather  positive  and  active  good,  to  neigh- 

1  James  ii,  12. 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
bor;  now  be  free,  now  do  just  what  you  like. 
This  higher  lawlessness  has  been  very  slow  hitherto 
to  establish  itself  in  the  Christian  consciousness; 
has  been  very  imperfectly  able  to  disentangle 
itself  from  the  austerities  of  a  childhood  stage 
of  being,  the  nonage  and  schoolmastery  of  the 
Old  Testament.  Men  could  not  trust  themselves, 
could  not  let  themselves  go,  could  not  cast  them- 
selves as  these  two  brothers  Jesus  and  James 
did,  in  utter  faith,  on  the  healthful  current  of 
life.  But  this,  just  this,  is  manhood  freedom. 
To  do  as  you  will,  because  the  will  in  which  your 
whole  being  centres  is  divine,  this  is  the  life  of 
the  spirit,  self-directive  and  free;  this  is  the 
wisdom  of  freedom,  taking  its  healthful  insights 
and  impulses  for  granted,  and  advancing  not  in 
rebellion  against  the  laws  and  standards  of  its 
dictating  world,  but  in  hearty  fellowship  with 
what  is  good  in  them.  It  is  freedom  consenting 
to  the  law  that  it  is  holy  and  just  and  good,  and 
in  the  line  of  that  inner  consent  going  on  as  con- 
fidently as  if  it  had  no  restraint  at  all. 

Of  course  James,  the  mechanic's  son  of  Naz- 
areth, does  not  philosophize  this  all  out.  He  does 
not  need  to  do  so,  for  he  has  entered  the  life  which 
is  itself  a  wisdom,  a  philosophy.  This  definition 
of  our  life's  standard  as  the  law  of  liberty  is 
397 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

no  accident  or  innovation.  A  long  history  of 
expanding  insight  and  culture  lies  behind  and 
beneath  it.  Nor  is  James  the  uncultured  man  we 
would  make  him  out;  his  epistle,  with  its  citations 
of  scripture  truths  and  personages,  shows  that 
he  has  the  whole  spirit  of  Hebrew  Wisdom  in 
solution.  But  he  does  better  than  philosophize; 
he  acts  upon  it.  To  look  into  the  perfect  law  of 
liberty,  he  says,  and  merely  read  it  or  hear  it, 
amounts  to  nothing;  you  forget  it  all,  just  as  you 
forget  how  your  face  looks  in  a  glass.  To  give 
merely  an  intellectual  or  emotional  assent  is  just 
what  devils  can  do;  they  also  believe,  and  tremble. 
This  law  of  yours  is  not  a  thing  to  look  at,  not  a 
thing  for  scribes  and  rabbis  and  theorists  and 
doctors  to  putter  with;  it  is  a  thing  to  live. 
Wisdom  is  a  thing  to  be,  and  to  know  by  being 
it,  just  as  the  wisest  teacher  that  ever  lived  is  the 
Wisdom  of  God.  Faith  is  good  for  nothing  with- 
out the  works,  whereby  you  bear  the  weight  of 
your  will,  your  activity,  your  life,  on  what  you 
believe.  Your  faith  itself  is  essentially  a  whole- 
souled  venture;  that  is  its  principle.  Now  do 
what  you  will,  put  your  faith  into  the  currents 
of  the  world's  life,  and  invite  judgment  on  that 
score.  This  counsel  expresses,  in  common-sense 
terms,  the  tremendous  emergence  of  life  from 

593 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
the  legal  into  the  spiritual,  from  the  yoke  of  law 
cosmic  and  worldly,  into  the  full  swing  of  the  law 
of  liberty,  or  as  St.  Paul  calls  it,  the  law  of  the 
spirit  of  life.  We  may  tabulate  it,  so  to  say,  by 
reducing  it  to  these  two  elemental  things:  to  will 
what  you  do,  that  is,  to  enlist  your  whole  per- 
sonality in  the  life  you  live;  and  secondly,  to  do 
what  you  will,  that  is,  to  make  your  freedom  a 
practical  carrying  out  of  your  personality  into 
action. 

Thus,  as  we  examine  the  three  great  ideas  in 
which  men's  philosophies  nucleate,  we  find  that  all 
in  turn,  God,  immortality,  freedom,  have  come  into 
the  solution  of  every-day  common  sense,  by  being 
incorporated  into  common  life.  We  can  say  of 
them  not  that  they  are  merely  proved  reasonable 
and  credible,  but  just  that  they  are  actual.  While 
men  have  been  doubting  and  denying  and  con- 
jecturing and  getting  into  logical  labyrinths,  these 
unassuming  Hebrews  have  approached  the  great 
ideas  by  the  way  of  the  spirit  and  put  them  into 
working  order.  Thus,  if  they  have  not  sounded 
the  abysmal  depths  of  metaphysics,  they  have 
done  the  more  practical  thing;  they  have  made 
their  philosophy  of  life,  with  all  its  large  in- 
volvements, an  applied  science.  I  was  once  at 
dinner  with  a  prominent  master  engineer  and 
399 


HEBREW  LITERATURE  OF  WISDOM 

employer,  who,  on  being  asked  how  his  corps  of 
engineers  solved  the  complex  problems  of  their 
work,  answered,  "Well,  they  do  it  mostly  by  plain 
common  sense."  "But,"  it  was  asked,  "don't 
they  depend  a  great  deal  on  their  mathemat- 
ical computations  and  formulae?"  "No;  they 
use  very  little  mathematics;  some  few  simple 
formulae,  of  course;  but  mostly  they  do  it  by 
common  sense."  We  will  bear  in  mind,  however, 
that  the  common  sense  he  was  thinking  of  was 
the  common  sense  of  an  engineer;  it  was  trained, 
educated,  disciplined.  So  likewise  was  the  com- 
mon sense  that  issued  in  this  sturdy  working  phi- 
losophy. It  had,  as  we  have  seen,  a  history,  a  long 
growth  of  human  personality  and  human  medita- 
tion and  human  utterance  behind  it;  and  its 
road  lay  not  through  speculations  but  through 
life. 

One  of  the  most  telling  examples  of  what  Wis- 
dom has  done,  in  laying  stress  on  the  sterling  and 
self-evidencing  strain  of  character,  is  seen  in 
the  way  it  approaches  that  attitude  of  religion 
which  was  so  dominant  in  the  Hebrew  genius, 
and  from  which  the  nation  could  not  disengage 
itself.  We  will  remember  that  James's  care  of 
the  church  in  Jerusalem  fell  in  a  time  when  Pente- 
cost, with  all  its  enthusiasms  of  spiritual  awaken- 

400 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
ing,  was  a  recent  and  ruling  memory  of  the  church. 
There  were  spiritual  gifts  to  be  tempered  and 
regulated.  Speaking  with  tongues,  prophesying, 
ecstatic  mental  states,  the  "features  commonly 
found  in  all  forms  of  revivalism,"  were  in  special 
evidence;  it  being  the  nascent  stage  of  the  church, 
when  the  primitive  traits  — the  subterranean, 
forcibly  repressed  life  of  the  soul  —  break  forth 
in  mighty  surges;  and  all  this  carried  with  it  the 
danger  of  exaggerated  pietism,  and  emotional 
luxury,  and  "the  depreciation  of  simple  moral- 
ity."1 At  such  a  tense  and  perilous  time,  when 
of  all  epochs  of  the  world  it  was  needful  that  the 
spirits  of  the  prophets  be  subject  to  the  prophets, 
no  better  fortune  could  have  befallen  the  church 
than  to  have  come  under  the  just,  wise,  yet 
saintly  governance  of  this  brother  of  our  Lord 
from  Galilee.  And  the  wisdom  with  which  he 
was  imbued  stood  him  in  good  stead;  is,  more 
than  aught  else,  the  tempering  element.  It  was 
not  in  a  mind  nor  in  a  nation  possessed  of  such 
a  heritage  as  his  to  divorce  religion,  however 
ecstatic  or  devotional,  from  practical  good  works. 
Let  us  adduce  here  the  strangely  self-evident 
yet  vital  and  searching  definition  that  James 

1  I  have  used,  and  partly  quoted  here,  a  passage  in  Weinel's  St. 
Paul,  the  Man  and  his  Work,  pp.  251,  252. 
401 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

makes  of  religion,  the  only  definition  of  religion, 
indeed,  that  we  have  in  the  Bible.  "Pure  re- 
ligion," he  says,  "and  undefiled  before  God  and 
the  Father  is  this,  To  visit  the  fatherless  and 
widows  in  their  affliction,  and  to  keep  himself 
unspotted  from  the  world."  1  Why,  this  seems 
to  have  deflected  the  whole  matter  away  from 
what  we  naturally  think  of  in  religion,  from  those 
liturgies  and  ceremonies  and  raptures  by  which 
the  soul  is  supported,  and  which  symbolize  the 
concentration  of  the  soul  on  God;  and  to  have 
made  its  goal  cleanness  of  life  and  regard  for  those 
needy  ones  from  whom  we  can  expect  no  pay. 
But  in  so  doing,  if  it  induces  the  man  to  live  his 
sacredest  life  by  willing  what  God  wills,  it  may 
take  for  granted  that  God,  being  love,  is  less 
concerned  for  the  personal  adulation  He  gets 
than  for  the  pulsation  of  love  and  Godlikeness 
He  induces;  and  so  it  has  the  root  of  the  mat- 
ter, after  all.  Get  such  religion,  and  you  have 
its  Object  within  you,  a  pulsation,  a  character, 
a  life. 

What,  finally,  has  this  Wisdom  come  to  be  as 
a  candidate  for  the  rewards  of  life,  as  looking 
toward  that  reasonable  wage  which  rightly  cor- 
relates with  our  work  ?  The  question  of  reward 

1  James  i,  27. 
4O2 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
has  emerged  all  along  the  way;  sometimes  it  has 
almost  monopolized  the  field;  and  the  attacks 
and  conflicts  of  motive  have  raged  round  it.  What 
now,  as  we  see  Wisdom  at  its  highest  and  sanest, 
has  become  of  its  reward  ? 

Well,  as  we  look  into  the  matter,  we  discover 
a  thing  no  less  momentous  than  this:  that  it  is 
the  distinctive  mission  of  the  life  and  literature 
of  Wisdom,  as  distinguished  from  the  life  and 
obligation  of  law,  to  bring  out  to  clear  solution 
the  whole  problem  of  life's  compensations.  Law 
cannot  do  it.  Law  is  concerned  with  justice  and 
right-ness,  with  evening  things  up  so  that  when 
the  balance  is  struck  there  will  be  no  arrears  of 
iniquity  or  transgression  to  incur  penalty.  Law 
is  so  austere  and  exacting  that  when  we  are 
through  with  living  we  may  deem  ourselves  for- 
tunate if  we  have  kept  the  functions  of  life  in- 
tact and  integral.  But,  as  the  Wisdom  of  God  has 
pointed  out,  this  does  not  connote  payment,  or 
any  enrichment  of  being,  any  more  than  a  healthy 
body  or  a  good  digestion  may  eventually  present 
itself  as  a  candidate  for  reward.  "Doth  he  thank 
that  servant,"  Jesus  says  of  any  human  master, 
"because  he  did  the  things  that  were  commanded 
him  ?  I  trow  not.  So  likewise  ye,  when  ye  shall 
have  done  all  those  things  which  are  commanded 
403 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

you,  say,  We  are  unprofitable  servants:  we  have 
done  that  which  was  our  duty  to  do."  l  We  can 
feel  how  our  Lord's  controlling  ideal  of  exuber- 
ance of  life,  Tre/ncrcroy,  doing  more  and  other  than 
duty,  here  moulds  the  expression.  We  have  seen 
how  the  same  idea  struggled  up  through  Wis- 
dom; how,  when  in  Job's  time  Wisdom  was  in 
danger  of  degenerating  into  commercialism,  a 
warmth  within  the  breast  rose  up  to  record  its 
protest  and  awaken  a  wholesome  reaction  and 
shame.  We  have  seen,  in  Ecclesiastes'  time,  how 
the  lack  of  that  overflow,  as  he  sensed  it  in  the 
world,  seemed  to  bring  things  to  a  mere  gyration 
of  being,  in  which  the  soul  of  the  world  grew 
dizzy  and  despairing.  And  when  Ecclesiastes 
raised  that  virtual  question,  What  is  that  thing 
reward  ?  and  sounded  all  its  depths  and  shoals, 
he  could  find,  to  answer  his  question,  nothing  other 
than  life  itself,  its  labors  bravely  undertaken,  its 
character  ennobled  by  the  vitality  of  eternity  in 
the  heart.  And  his  answer  was  the  right  and  suf- 
ficing one,  so  far  as  it  went,  so  far  as  without 
overflow  it  could  fill  existence  to  the  brim.  There 
is  nobility,  for  many  minds  the  highest  nobility, 
in  a  life  that  is  its  own  reward,  intrinsically  be- 
yond being  bought  or  sold  by  glory  or  warped 

1  Luke  xvii,  9,  10. 
404 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
by  any  form  of  greed.    It  is  Tennyson's  ideal  of 
the  wages  of  living;   I  hardly  need  quote  a  thing 
so  truly  a  household  word. 

"Glory  of  warrior,  glory  of  orator,  glory  of  song, 
Paid  with  a  voice  flying  by  to  be  lost  on  an  endless  sea  — 

Glory  of  Virtue,  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong: 
Nay,  but  she  airo'd  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she: 

Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on,  and  still  to  be. 

"The  wages  of  sin  is  death:  if  the  wages  of  Virtue  be  dust, 
Would  she  have  heart  to  endure  for  the  life  of  the  worm  and 
the  fly? 

She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of  the  just, 
To  rest  in  a  golden  grove,  or  to  bask  in  a  summer  sky: 

Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on,  and  not  to  die."  l 

This  is  no  alien  idea  to  the  older  Wisdom.  We 
get  the  vibration  and  a  degree  of  the  faith  of  it 
in  the  very  second  proverb  of  the  Solomonic  col- 
lection, which,  though  in  negative  form,  involves 
the  whole  fibre  of  the  Wisdom  literature:  — 

"Treasures  of  wickedness  profit  nothing: 
But  righteousness  delivereth  from  death."  * 

In  this  beginning  the  forecast  of  the  end  is  begun. 
But  to  have  brought  life  so  far,  noble  and 
worthy  as  it  is,  is  not  to  have  made  it,  as  we  say 
nowadays,  a  paying  investment.  It  has  simply 
raised  the  law-endowed  life  to  its  highest  power, 
and  at  that  height  has  found  it  so  sound  and 

1  Tennyson,  Wages.  *  Proverbs  x,  a. 

405 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

intrinsic  that  it  would  not  barter  it  for  anything 
else,  glory  or  wages,  or  measure  its  value  in  any 
terms  except  those  of  its  own  permanence.  If 
the  reward  is  the  life  itself,  we  are  still  in  the 
domain  of  equivalence;  wherein  is  still  a  note 
of  rendering  due  and  of  stoic  hardness  ;  and  this 
can  produce  the  complacency  of  fulfilment,  but 
not  the  rapture  of  creating  new  values.  And 
this  latter  is  what  reward  essentially  is;  it  is  the 
bringing  of  a  new  and  higher  value  to  light,  a 
real  profit,  recognized  as  more  than  equivalent  to 
the  investment.  It  is  when  the  Wisdom  of  God 
becomes  the  natural  way  of  living  that  a  super- 
induced reward,  felt  as  such  and  never  cloying  or 
disappointing,  comes  as  an  asset  into  the  capi- 
talization of  life. 

What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  that  reward  ?  In  a 
life  that  has  learned  the  blessedness  of  overflow, 
what  can  come  back,  a  corresponding  compen- 
sation, to  meet  its  generous  outlay  ? 

It  has  not  been  without  its  vibrations  of  antici- 
pation and  prophecy.  Back  in  the  days  of  the 
early  Solomonic  Wisdom,  a  sage  had  the  insight 
to  say:  — 

"The  fruit  of  the  righteous  is  a  tree  of  life; 
And  he  that  winneth  souls  is  wise."  1 

1  Proverbs  xii,  30. 
406 


AS  BETWEEN  BROTHERS 
Here,  if  we  will  consider  it,  begins  to  reverberate 
a  new  note,  a  new  motive  of  Wisdom :  not  buying 
or  earning,  but  winning,  and  winning  not  gold, 
nor  anything  to  appease  the  pride  of  possession, 
but  souls.  It  may  still  be  keen  and  shrewd  and 
foresighted,  yet  quickening  and  fruitful  as  a  ray 
of  kindly  sunlight,  as  it  takes  its  pay  in  love. 
Later  an  apocalyptic  prophet  makes  a  similar 
discovery  of  the  radiant  new  ideal;  but  to  him  the 
sequel  of  it  still  appears  extrinsic,  as  if  not  that 
itself  but  the  shine  and  glory  of  it  were  the  ulti- 
mate thing  to  live  for.  "They  that  be  wise," 
says  Daniel,  "shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of 
the  firmament;  and  they  that  turn  many  to  right- 
eousness as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever."  *  An  au- 
thentic foregleam,  this,  of  that  crowning  reversal 
of  the  spiritual  current  wherein  the  adult  man  is 
no  longer  a  living  soul  but  a  life-giving  spirit. 
We  have  already  seen  it  worked  out  in  type,  in 
the  Wisdom  of  God;  such  was  Christ's  reward; 
He  lost  worldly  emoluments,  life  and  all,  but  "of 
them  which  thou  gavest  me  have  I  lost  none."' 
Then  later,  in  the  fiery  and  fervent  life  of  Paul, 
it  becomes  the  absorbing,  overwhelming  impulse 
of  his  existence;  he  will  stop  at  no  perils  or  per- 
secutions, no  dignities  or  self-regarding  proprieties; 

»  Daniel  xii,  3.  '  J°hn  viii,  9- 

407 


HEBREW   LITERATURE   OF   WISDOM 

becoming  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  any  means 
he  may  save  some.  Here  is  the  real  achievement 
of  reward;  and  in  the  tremendous  appetency  of 
it  Paul  would  almost  rather  stay  here  laboring 
and  suffering  than  go  to  be  with  Christ. 

Is  this  too  high  to  be  the  ideal  of  a  common 
man  in  Christ,  —  too  ethereal,  and  so  to  say  pro- 
fessional, to  be  infused  into  that  life  of  industry 
and  business,  getting  and  spending,  wherein  the 
ordinary  personality  seems  to  be  lost  in  the  crowd  ? 
It  does  not  seem  to  be  shirked,  even  by  this 
apostle  of  common  sense.  Let  us  hear  the  final 
word  with  which  our  Lord's  brother  takes  leave 
of  those  whom  he  has  rejoiced  to  call  his  brothers 
one  and  all.  "My  brethren,"  he  says,  "if  any 
among  you  do  err  from  the  truth,  and  one  convert 
him;  let  him  know  that  he  which  converteth  a 
sinner  from  the  error  of  his  way  shall  save  a  soul 
from  death,  and  shall  cover  a  multitude  of  sins."  l 
This  is  where  Wisdom,  the  vitalizing  leaven  of 
the  kingdom  of  God,  lands  us  at  last;  Wisdom 
employing  all  its  discipline  and  all  its  beneficent 
art,  not  in  mere  self-culture  but  in  soul-culture; 
and  this,  the  responsive  life  of  the  neighbor  at 
our  side,  the  rescue  of  souls  from  death,  the 
vitalizing  of  a  new  creation  in  love  and  wisdom, 

1  James  v,  20. 
408 


AS    BETWEEN   BROTHERS 

—  this  is  its  success  and  reward.    And  this  is  the 
only  reward.    Any  life  imprisoned   in   self,  even 
the  noblest,  proudest  self,  becomes  unendurable; 
any  life  absorbed  in  the  enrichment  of  the  mind, 
by  art  or  study  or  invention,  is  still  subject  to 
the  weariness  of  the  flesh  and  to  the  eventual 
break-down  of   the  powers;    but  life  identified 
in  love  and  faith  with  the  salvation  and  welfare 
of  men    is   life   eternal,  which    day   by   day   is 
renewed  though  the  outward  man  perish,  and  to 
which  is  added  a  compensation  more  than  wages. 
Such  a  thing  has  the  wisdom  which  is  from 
above,  witnessing  with  the  wisdom  which  is  from 
beneath,  brought  into  the  motive  and  capacity 
of  the  common  man.     Its  beginning,  the  initial 
impulse  of  sanity,  was  the  fear  of  the  Lord.    Its 
end,  the  coronation  of  common  sense,  is  the  love 
of  man.    And  the  two  agree  in  one;   for  thereby 
the  unseen  Love  which  created  and  ever  creates 
is    naturalized    and    domesticated    in    His    own 
creation,  being  identified  with  least  and  lowliest. 
And  the  field  of  this  wisdom  is  the  home  field 
alike  of  low  degree  and  rich,  its  values  mutual 
and  fruitful,  as  between  brothers. 


JS-SOyiHERNR 


A    000058366 


